Blue Ocean Strategy for Hinduism

                                                                 
As a part of his idea of promoting Hinduism as a successful brand the author attempts to apply blue ocean strategy on Hinduism. For those who do not know what Blue Ocean strategy stands for, it should be made clear that it is a very revolutionary and innovative business strategy plan that attempts to capture the non customer segment of a brand by providing them value innovation. For further idea one can refer to the blog articles written by the author. Here goes the link:- http://themanagmentguru.blogspot.com/search/label/BLUE%20OCEAN%20STRATEGY


Three kinds of non customers for Hinduism1:-

a) 1st tier: - Hindus themselves who have some idea of Hinduism and also need of spirituality. They do follow some rituals but often due to busy schedule and lack of interest their own understanding is very stereotyped and superficial2.

b) 2nd tier: - A large chunk of agnostics, atheists, scientologists, religious humanists and people from other religions with very feeble religious inclinations. These people too have some spiritual inclination but find the current schools of religion as illogical, dogmatic and impractical.

c) 3rd Tier: - This includes religious zealots and fundamentalist from various religious faiths and hardcore atheists.



Value Innovation: - Hinduism the oldest religion of the world is also the most complex one. This complexity arises from the fact that there is not a single set of beliefs that is supposed to be followed rather there are end no. of different schools of thoughts that constitute the religion as a whole. It consists of thousands and thousands of gods, scriptures, chants, mantras, rituals, meditation techniques etc. Understanding Hinduism as a whole is not only tough but quite impractical. Hence in order to market it to its non customer base it is quite essential that rather than selling it as a whole only specific parts be promoted. Specific ideas those are relevant to the modern people. Hence an ERRC3 frame work will be applied:-

Eliminate:-

a) All types of social practices that promote social evils such as cast based discriminations, exploitation of women in the name of religion, sacrifices etc. Also scriptures directly supporting such ideas should be discarded.

Reduce:-

a) Priesthood: - though priesthood is important for religious conservation but too much reliance on priesthood can be detrimental. Many a times it had been seen that inspired by personal benefits they communicate wrong signals to devotees which leads to misconception. Also they are not hesitant of molding the meaning of scriptures for personal gain.

b) Rituals: - Hinduism is a highly ritualistic religion and many times there abundance eclipses the real knowledge and enlightening practices. Too much of rituals give it a paganic shape. Hence it also needs to be curtailed to some extent.

c) Things that raise superstition in the name of religion.

d) Emphasis on Hindu mythologies.

Raise:-

a) Stand alone practices like Yoga, chanting meditations, dynamic meditations etc.

b) Emphasis on higher levels of philosophies embedded in Hinduism.

c) Alliance with other related religious faiths such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism4 etc.

d) Emphasis on classical and logical ideas like classical advaita, Karmic theories etc.

e) Promotion of Hindu art crafts and symbols. Use of logos and symbols on apparels, desktops etc5.


Create:-

a) Professionally designed spiritual cum religious tour packages that will not only include touring religious places but also lot of yoga sessions, spiritual discourses, debates etc.

b) Hindu religion is a very symbolic religion where everything has a strong symbolic meaning but unfortunately over the period of time the symbols have taken the front stage and the real meaning have lost. For the marketing of religion to the intellectual circles it’s essential that the real meaning must be communicated. Exp: - Krishna is a mythological character but in reality it defines a kind of consciousness, a perfectly enlightened and pure consciousness but over the period of time the mythological dimension has completely surpassed the true meaning. Hence a large amount of discourses, lectures along with written documents should be produced to communicate the real meaning of symbols.

c) Strong emphaisis on liberal sides of hinduism which believes in individual liberty, freedom and openness.



(Note:-

1:- Initial focus should be to capture tier1 and tier 2 non customers.

2:- There knowledge lacks the intellectual dimension of Hinduism and is often restricted to visiting temple and following rituals.

3:- eliminate, reduce, raise and create framework. A blue ocean strategy framework used for giving new innovative values to the non customers.

4:- Emphasis should be only in showing similarity. This should not result in any controversy.

5:- Stuffs that can hurt religious sentiments should be avoided.

)