I first came across this German word in a Julian Barnes novel "Level of Life" where he describes this as ‘the longing for something’. He adds that it has romantic and mystical connotations: C. S. Lewis defined it as the ‘inconsolable longing’ in the human heart for ‘we know not what’.

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Once I researched (googled is more apt, but researched sounds so scholarly) I realised that it has a huge cultural bias. In a multi-country experiment, German participants associated it more with unattainable, utopian states while Americans reported the concept as not as important to everyday life. As consumers we are increasingly in a state of longingness for something.

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A state of constant "I want that". Goals in life are something like that especially when it comes to investment products. We forget why we invested or what goal. The quest for more is so deep that the end“ something” is almost indescribable.

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This short piece is a follow up to an earlier piece on "The Art of asking right questions" where we highlighted the predicament of consumers in a choice filled world. The longing for something just never ends. In a hyper marketed world, you are constantly made to feel your life is incomplete without the latest product with the latest feature.

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This same novel further states a brilliant and thought-provoking sentence “Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.” The best companies are very adept at allowing customers to discover their products. This self-discovery makes customers build a connect and sort of personalise the product ownership.

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Good marketers make consumers feel that this was the product that consumers were longing all along and life would be so much better if they buy it. This way there is a more emotional bond to a transaction as you have greater ownership of the product by the consumer. As it’s something that has been discovered through careful evaluation. Thus, the objective is to not just display products and endless features but instead subtly describe the most appropriate user persona for each feature or product (there we used the right jargon to qualify as a CX oriented company).

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To give an example. Sample this question which most investors face? -Who is a Flexi Cap more suitable for? I think a version of the answer could be -Investors who want a measured exposure to all market caps rather than concentrated exposures to Mid or small caps and willing to trust fund managers judgment.

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I can think of 5 questions that describe each of these facts and further on cement the closure by highlighting the movement between various market caps across months and even years rather than providing a snapshot of just last month’s portfolio. (Something we have done for a client of ours.)

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This Q&A approach is even more pertinent where consumers are getting fatigued and distrustful in an overcommunicated world. Consumers are slowly realising that they are being gamed. In this cat and mouse game between consumers and manufacturers with their marketing machinery gaining trust is a gradual and arduous process.

It is not about making a quick sale and then moving on to the next potential customer.