The subconscious makes all our decisions.

Top hundred Indian brands are valued at $92.6 while the brand value of Apple alone is $118.8 billion. India has 1.2 billion people and high taxes on imports, by making them more expensive, have traditionally protected Indian companies. SBI and LIC are recognised brands in India not because they give superior service but because, these being owned by the government, your money is safe.  If Jaguar and Land Rover are global brands it is because they are seen as British and not because they are owned by Tata. Why this lack of trust for Indians brands? Seems that our decisions are made by the subconscious part of our minds and our conscious mind merely exercises a veto depending on circumstances. This was proved by an American psychologist, Benjamin Libet who showed that brain activity related to moving a finger occurred 300 milliseconds before the person was conscious of the desire to move the finger. This means that spending vast sums on advertising are not going to build brand value unless the ads are seen as reflecting the truth from experiences of having used the brand. Hence, ' relevance, truthfulness and consistency ' will build trust and increase brand value but ' corporate self-interest, sugar coating and opportunism ' will destroy value. Indian business fellows are interested in quick money and not in the long term effort of building a world class brand as was proved by the sale of Thums Up, the largest selling cola brand in India, to Coca Cola. The Americans tried to kill off Thums Up but saw sales fall off, despite huge advertising, and have revived it again. The government was so alarmed at the sale of our pharma companies to foreigners that they slowed the process of FDI even though we needed foreign exchange. About half of the $512 billion spent on advertising is probably wasted. So how do human beings make decisions? A beautiful article tries to show the contradictions in human decision making by analysing the abduction of Helen by Paris, the son of Priam, the King of Troy. Asked by Zeus to choose the most beautiful among Hera, Athena and Aphrodite he asks to be bribed. Hera offers a large kingdom, Athena offers to make him invincible in war and Aphrodite offers him the love of Helen. He accepts Helen. His first mistake was to presume to decide the beauty of goddesses, his second was to ask for a bribe and his third was to ask for a Helen who was married to Menelaus, the King of Sparta. An experiment with monkeys shows how they behave as a herd when  faced with adverse circumstances and apparently reflects the way we behave when similarly faced. So, are we just apes in clothes?