Superstitions like
these are widely prevalent in all spheres of life. Cricketers are especially known
to be a very superstitious lot. Sachin
Tendulkar always wears his left pad first. Steve Waugh used to carry a red
handkerchief given to him by his grandfather in his left pocket.
Businessmen are also extremely superstitious.
And among businessmen, Hindi film producers take the cake. Rakesh Roshan has
always had the names of his movies starting with the letter K. Be it Kaho Na
Pyar Hai which released in 2000 and made his son Hrithik Roshan a superstar or
his latest production Kites, which turned out to be a massive flop.
Like Roshan, Karan
Johar of Dharma Productions, also developed a 'K' fixation, after his first
film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai became a huge hit. He has since given up on that and
his last directorial venture was called My Name is Khan.
Apart from Hindi films, stock market investors
are also an extremely superstitious lot. Stock market investors in various parts of the
world do not like eclipses. Copenhagen Business School's Gabriele Lepori examined
362 eclipses visible anywhere in the world between 1928 and 2008 — seen by the
superstitious as bad omens — and matched them against four American stock
indices and discovered a small but
persistent set of effects: eclipses correlate with lower-than-average stock
returns.
Businessmen also have
personal superstitions. Indian businessmen are known to make visits to Tirupati
(or other big temples) before they do a big deal. Then there is also the
aversion of 'big business' to have anything connected with number 13. 'Some 80
percent of high-rise buildings around the world lack a 13th floor, airports a
13th gate, and planes a 13th aisle...Larry Ellison tweeted to his entourage
that there may not be an Oracle
version 13'.
Superstition
also impacts company revenues. Take the case of the Shradh period in India,
during which it is considered inauspicious to make new purchases. So the sales
of consumer durables like televisions, refrigerators, washing machines etc, as
well as car sales, go down. Companies have to woo buyers by offering discounts.
Similarly, in the United States, 'paraskevidekatriaphobia' or the fear of Friday
the 13th pulls down sales by a billion dollars because people don't like to buy
new stuff on that day.
Experts are of the
opinion that marriage insurance in India hasn't taken off due to superstition.
The logic being, if I insure the wedding, something bad is going to happen.
While superstition does
impact revenues, companies can use superstition to create new business
opportunities as well. Take the case of diamond engagement rings. Over the
years, a superstition has developed that these rings need to be worth at least
'two months' salary'.
As Gary Belsky and
Thomas Gilovich write in Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to
Correct, 'It's a completely ridiculous figure — a ring should cost no more than
you can afford...Diamond merchants, you see, understand that by leading people
to start with a dollar figure equal to two months' salary, they almost
certainly guarantee more money for their industry. Why's that? Because people
who might have spent less for a ring will have been programmed to think that
two months' pay is the point below which they are cheapskates (and what man
wants his fiancee to think that?)'.
The other superstition
(some would say tradition) about an engagement ring is that it has to be worn
on the left hand. 'De Beers has recently begun advertising diamond rings for
single professional women, by trying to introduce a new social convention:
whereas traditional engagement rings are for the left hand, these single-woman
rings are 'right-hand rings',...today there are many wealthy women who are not
engaged, and who might nonetheless like a diamond ring', says Geoffrey Miller,
a professor of evolutionary psychology as well as the author of Spent - Sex,
Evolution, And Consumer Behaviour.
Jennifer Wang in the
article titled Turn Superstition into Marketing Gold, written for
www.entrepreneur.com, quotes Lauren Block, a professor of marketing. 'Block
referred to a study in which Taiwanese consumers often paid more for a package
of three tennis balls than four, because the number four is considered
ill-omened. In Mandarin Chinese, the pronunciation of 'four' is similar to that
of 'dead'.'
But why are businesses
and businessmen so superstitious? Wang quotes Stuart Vyse, a professor of
psychology, to explain: 'In the business world, there is a tremendous amount of
randomness in the market and people seek ways to gain control over these
events, even though they can't...What you wear that day, the coffee that you
drink —these things can't affect the outcome of the day's business, but people
engage in this (behaviour) to feel like they've done every possible thing to
manage the outcome'.
Source: Businessmen and superstition written
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