In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta is joined by Nishat Mehta, President of IRI, a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics, and forward-looking insights that help CPG, OTC healthcare, retailers, and media companies grow their businesses. They discuss some of Nishat’s Aha! moments, whether the carrot or the stick approach to management is more effective, and why consumer behavior has been more geared towards variety in recent years. They also delve into the difficulty of trying to attain brand loyalty in recent years and why the context surrounding consumer data is more important than the data on its own.

Nishat is the President of IRI and recently became the President of Global Solutions at Circana. He was the SVP of Brand Media and Customer Communications at 84.51˚ and a Forbes council member. Nishat got his Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and his Master’s in Computer Science at the prestigious Harvard University! 

This is one episode you don’t want to miss!

👉Nishat’s background originally began in mathematics and computer science, but he admits that he doesn’t use any of it in his current work. However, he says learning about debugging components and thinking about how they come back together is a skill that applies to everything in life, whether working a job as a general manager or planning a wedding. It’s helped him learn to apply various skills in his career.

👉We all know the idea of the “carrot and stick” approach of reward and punishment, and Nishat says that he’s had experiences with managers and mentors in his career where both have worked for him. He says, however, that people are far more motivated by the “carrot” (reward) method. Trying to lead through fear of punishment will not yield positive results, only rushed and half-baked ones.

👉When it comes to consumer behavior, Nishat believes that we need to personalize their experience; after all, no two people are the same, so assuming that the entire world’s population is consumers is just a sweeping generalization based on an outdated idea of demographics. Even before COVID, people were doing things only made popular because of the pandemic: using hand sanitizer every day, mixing their own drinks, and working from home. They weren’t a majority, but they were people that were ignored in favor of demographics.

👉We always talk about how the pandemic changed consumer insights and behaviors, but we often get too bogged down in the details, failing to offer a concise explanation for it. But Nishat explains it as this: “For a host of reasons, we had to become more welcoming of variety, and we’ve seen that as both a positive and a challenge to the industry”.

👉It is no longer acceptable to jump onto a big consumer trend and put all your resources into it because trends, by their very definition, will fade and go away, and people will move on to the next thing. There will be consumers that stay with that trend, but if brands put all their eggs into one particular basket, then they will miss out on everything else. 

👉Consumers will always be looking for variety, and every consumer is different. In some categories, consumers are all about efficiency, in others, they might be about experience. It’s about their values, thoughts and, what means something to them. It’s about keeping a pulse on what’s going on with the consumer's mindset and how it’s changing over time.

👉More data isn’t going to give us more clarity, at least not on its own. It’s the context surrounding the data that will help us understand how consumers think; everything is always about context. After all, what makes consumers who they are aren’t their demographics, but rather the values that drive their decisions. 

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