{"id":779,"date":"2012-08-20T12:40:08","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T12:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teekhapan.wordpress.com\/?p=779"},"modified":"2012-08-20T12:40:08","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T12:40:08","slug":"lessons-from-ek-tha-tiger-even-if-you-arent-a-salman-fan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/2012\/08\/20\/lessons-from-ek-tha-tiger-even-if-you-arent-a-salman-fan\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Ek Tha Tiger even if you aren\u2019t a Salman fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nVivek Kaul
\n<\/strong>
\nI haven\u2019t seen a Salman Khan movie in a cinema hall in more than 17 years now. The last time was when I saw Hum Aapke Hain Koun<\/em> for the twelfth and the last time, at the Sujata cinema in Ranchi, sometime in February 1995. The movie was running in its record twenty seventh week. And as many of you would agree Hum Aapke Hain Koun<\/em> was more of a Madhuri Dixit movie than a Salman Khan one.
\nThose were days when movies ran for prolonged periods and the 3200 print release that Salman Khan\u2019s most recent release Ek Tha Tiger<\/em> had, were unheard of. Money was made over a period of time and not in the first three-four days of release.
\nGiven that, if the people did not like the movie over the first three four days of its release the chances of the movie doing well were rather low. Unlike these days when the marketing blitzkrieg that accompanies a big release is so huge that most people are tempted to watch the movie over the first weekend of its release, and before they realize that they have ended up watching a lousy movie, the producer has made his money. What nobody really tells you is that how much money all these superhit movies make on the \u201cfifth\u201d day after their release?
\nThis strategy also requires a large number of prints of the movie being released to ensure that everyone and anyone who wants to see the movie gets to watch it. Hence the days when house-full boards were put up in front of cinema-halls are long gone.
\nGetting back to where we started. Salman Khan has attained a superstar status in Hindi cinema over the last few years. His movies have constantly done a business of over Rs 100 crore. Movies like Wanted<\/em>, Ready<\/em> and Bodyguard<\/em> which were remakes of hit movies from down south, were superhits in Hindi as well.
\nBut the movies of Salman Khan have never found favour with serious film critics (leaving out the ones who run film trade journals and have other incentives at work ).
\nSo I was rather surprised when Salman\u2019s latest release Ek Tha Tiger<\/em> got reasonably good reviews in most of the mainstream media. This got me interested and I decided to break my rule of not spending money on a Salman Khan movie and go check out the movie at the nearest multiplex.
\nHalf way through Ek Tha Tiger<\/em> I had a throbbing headache. It was similar to the one I had got when I was forced to watch Ready (or was it Bodyguard?) on television with a young cousin. The movie does have a few things going for it. The foreign locales in ETT (as diehard fans of Salman like to call it) are new. Indian cinema goers have never seen movies shot in Turkey, Cuba and Ireland, before this. Also Katrina Kaif has acted better than the dumb blonde she portrays well in most of her other movies. The supporting cast has acted well.
\nBut on the whole the movie is a little better than the mindless crap offered by Salman\u2019s earlier releases like Ready, Bodyguard, Wanted etc. So the question is why had so many film reviewers gone around giving it the kind of good reviews that they had?
\nThey had become victims of what behavioural economists call the ‘contrast effect’. We all tend to compare things before making a decision. Given this, the attraction of an option can be increased significantly by comparing it to a similar, but worse alternative. This is known as the \u2018contrast effect\u2019.
\nLet\u2019s understand this through an example. Real estate agents who help put out homes on rent, use the contrast effect very well. The way it has worked with me whenever I have tried to look for a rented accommodation is somewhat like this.
\nThe agent first takes me around and shows me a couple of apartments which are not in the best of condition. While coming out of these places, seeing my displeasure, the agent typically says that the apartment I showed you wasn\u2019t really great.
\n\u201cSo why did you show it to me?\u201d I normally question him, after we are out of the apartment. In such cases I get stock replies like, \u201cOh this place came to me only today morning. I hadn\u2019t checked it out before, I wouldn\u2019t have shown it to you otherwise,\u201d or \u201cI am just trying to figure out what kind of place you really want.\u201d
\nThis is where part-one of the act ends. Then the agent shows a place which is slightly better than the few run down places he had shown to me a little earlier. But the difference is that the rent in this case is significantly higher.
\nThis is the \u201ccontrast effect\u201d at work. The attractiveness of the apartment shown later is increased significantly by showing a few \u201crun down\u201d apartments earlier. The critics who reviewed Ek Tha Tiger<\/em> had fallen victims to the same \u201ccontrast effect\u201d. They had found the earlier movies of Salman Khan so lousy that in comparison a slightly better Ek Tha Tiger<\/em> was felt to be much better.
\nThe contrast effect has been put to great use by retailers as well to increase the attractiveness of certain products. A 1992 research paper written by Itamar Simonson and Amos Tversky, shows this through an example of a retailer who was selling a bread making machine. The machine was priced at $275. In the days to come the company also started selling a similar but larger bread making machine. The sales of this new machine were very low. But a very interesting thing happened. The sales of the $275 machine more or less doubled. As an article on the website of the Harvard Law School points out \u201cApparently, the $275 model didn\u2019t seem like a bargain until it was sitting next to the $429 model.\u201d (you can read the complete article here<\/a>)
\nThis is a trick used by retailers all over the world to great effect. By displaying two largely similar but differently priced products, the sales of the product with the lower price can be increased significantly by making it look like a bargain.
\nThe contrast effect can also be put to use while making financial negotiations, like in the case of a job offer. In this case it makes sense to start with asking for more than you expect realistically. \u201cThe contrast effect suggests a strategic move: ask for more than you realistically expect, accept rejection, and then shade your offer downward. Your counterpart in the financial negotiations is likely to find a reasonable offer even more appealing after rejecting an offer that\u2019s out of the question,\u201d points the Havard Law School article points out.
\nAnother area where contrast effect is used to great effect is while selling a fraudulent financial scheme which is basically a Ponzi scheme. In 1919, Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant to the United States of America (US), promised to double the money of investors who invested in his scheme in 90 days.
\nThe news spread quickly. Money started pouring in as no other investments in the market at that point of time, promised such high returns, in such a short span of time. At its peak, the scheme had 40,000 investors who had invested around $ 15 million in the scheme. Meanwhile, Ponzi had started living an extravagant life blowing up the money investors brought in.
\nOn Aug 10th, 1920, the scheme collapsed. The auditors, the newspapers and the banks declared that Ponzi was definitely bankrupt. It was revealed that money brought in by the new investors was used to pay off old investors. Thus an illusion of a successful investment scheme was created.
\nCharles Ponzi was not the last guy to run a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Such Ponzi schemes have continued since then and keep cropping up all the time.
\nThe contrast effect is at play when investors decide to invest in a Ponzi scheme. It becomes relevant in the context of a Ponzi Scheme when the prospective investor starts comparing the returns on the various schemes available in the market for investment at that point of time to the returns being promised by the Ponzi scheme. The high returns of the Ponzi Scheme stand out clearly and attract gullible investors.
\nSo film reviewers are not the only \u201cvictims\u201d of the contrast effect. It is at work in various facets of our \u201cfinancial\u201d lives as well. There was another big learning for me from the Ek Tha Tiger<\/em> experiment. The next time I convince myself to watch a Salman Khan movie at a multiplex the least I could do is watch the morning show and not waste much money in the process.
\nThe article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 20,2012. http:\/\/www.firstpost.com\/bollywood\/lessons-from-ek-tha-tiger-even-if-you-arent-a-salman-fan-423669.html<\/a>
\n(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at vivek.kaul@gmail.com. He is not a Shahrukh Khan fan) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vivek Kaul I haven\u2019t seen a Salman Khan movie in a cinema hall in more than 17 years now. The last time was when I saw Hum Aapke Hain Koun for the twelfth and the last time, at the Sujata cinema in Ranchi, sometime in February 1995. The movie was running in its record twenty … <\/p>\n

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