Internshala Business Case Contest 2016

Important Instructions
1. The deadline for 1st round submission is September 11, 2016 23:59:59 Hrs. Late
submissions will be immediately disqualified. Also, once uploaded you would not be able to
edit/change your submission.
2. You must upload your answer in PDF format only (<1MB) and your answer of the problem
statement must not exceed 2 pages.
3. Your answer to Business Case problem statement would be evaluated on following
parameters
a) Business acumen (10%)
b) Creative solutions to business problem (10%)
c) Structured thinking (30%)
d) Industry Research & Understanding (20%)
e) Communications (30%)
4. Please work with the data provided to solve the case. If you feel a particular data is missing,
make reasonable assumption & state them clearly in your working.
Good luck!

Case Study
Preamble
Nudges are ways of influencing choice without limiting the choice set or making alternatives
appreciably more costly in terms of time, trouble, social sanctions, and so forth.
In todays world, the audience is constantly bombarded with a variety of data choices and enticing
campaigns, both on the personal and professional front. The audience often does not possess the right
tools nor the attention span to navigate through these decisions in real-time. Even when the intention
is to evoke a response that is beneficial to the consumer (public service schemes, for instance), the
inability to channel the required time, mind-share and effort renders her ineffective in making the
right choices.
Under such circumstances, it is increasingly critical for organisations to understand their consumers
better and design trauma-free consumer engagements. This can be achieved by employing the
nudge framework, which guides the audience towards the right choice subtly, and propels them
towards the options that benefit them. There are several examples of nudging concepts which
illustrate this, a few examples of which have been shared in the Annexure 1 below.
Based on individual behaviour, the concept relies on an in-depth understanding of social, cognitive,
and emotional factors that incentivise decision making. These, in turn, are shaped within a technology
intensive ecosystem. It is within this Information and Communications Technology (ICT) ecosystem
that nudge interventions can play a major part, in helping people choose the right option using a
bare minimum of support and effort.

Business Requirement
How do future-ready organisations conceive a framework / methodology that shapes individual
behaviour invisibly (subtly)? In contrast to traditional methods like loud campaigns, this philosophy
seeks to take the focus away from forcefully and directly imposing decisions, and towards indirectly
incentivising the beneficial decision.

Problem Statement [consumer focused industry]

Organisations are increasingly using multiple channels to reach out to audiences and influence their
buying decisions. Cut throat competition between incumbents, the invasion of a multitude of
substitutes, the resource-intensive nature of customer delight strategies and the fleeting nature of
customer focus makes it difficult for both parties to arrive at a win-win proposition.
You, as a corporate strategist, are required to develop a framework that influences your target
audience to choose your products/ services over others, using the nudge philosophy. It should
lead to an ecosystem that creates an environment which positions your brand and products as the
best choice available with minimal effort.

Approach:
-

Choose an industry of your choice or work across industries to pick organizations which may
have consciously or unconsciously adopted Nudge Philosophy
Deep dive and study examples of nudge prevailing in these organizations
Choose a product and/or service (of your choice) and apply the nudge philosophy to come
up with a compelling framework that propels consumers to choose your product/service
organically

Annexure
Examples that elaborate the Nudge philosophy
1. Images of incentives or dangers encourage or deter users to behave in a certain way: installing speed
breakers and road side reflectors, for instance nudge people towards safe driving.
2. Default options to opt-out of social policies such as organ donation people are less likely to opt
out than opt-in, done at the time of insurance renewal.
3. First-person consent or active choosing option by asking to choose organ donation at the time of
driving license renewal.
4. Making it easier to switch from their current electricity provider; by persuading power companies to
give user patterns in the bills as a bar code, which upon putting in an app gives out the accurate
energy consumption.
5. Brief reminders through SMS/text messaging, emails and phone calls about taking malaria/TBrelated vaccination/ medication on time.
6. Asking a person to be a blood donor when he leases or purchases residences or he registers as an
employee.
7. Allowing people to opt-out of LPG subsidy over phone, while they are registering to replace their
cylinders through an automated, customer-centric facility. This has generated impressive returns in
India, in spite of involving no manual effort nor an official mandate from the government.

Learn more about the Nudge Philosophy

1. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior [Jonah Berger]
2. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness [Richard H. Thaler, Cass R.
Sunstein]
3. Videos:
a.

Ted Talk - Sendhil Mullainathan: Solving social problems with a nudge

b.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein on Nudge Youtube Video

c.

Ted Radio Hour Richard Thaler