THE FIVE SHOPKEEPERS

It was business as usual in the marketplace. Shopkeepers were opening and cleaning their shops, as customers began trickling in. Each shop had a signboard vying for the customer’s attention. This is about the Five Shopkeepers.

The first shop’s sign was -ATA. The first letter had fallen off, and the shopkeeper hadn’t bothered to repair it. The customer looked at the board and wondered. Was it BATA selling shoes, TATA selling tea, or LATA selling music? Confused, the customer moved on.

The next shop was called TOUGHNUT HARDWARE. Being a computer geek, the customer entered to see the latest hardware. To his consternation he found it stocked with very different hardware – nuts and bolts! The customer realised that connotations change with time, the same word meaning different things to different people.

The third shop was called MADHUSHALA (a place for honey). Hoping to get some pure honey the customer dashed in, only to discover that it was selling country liquor, as Madhushala is a misnomer commonly used in north India for such dens. Names can indeed be deceptive and misleading.

Fourth in line was a posh, air-conditioned SUPERMARKET. Many well-heeled customers were going in. However, this particular customer was rather poorly dressed and felt intimidated by the grand ambience. The shop looked too expensive. In trepidation, he walked on.

The last shop in the row was called the ROSERY. At last, here was something nice. He could pick up a bunch of sweet smelling red roses for his dear wife. Alas, this too was not to be. The shop had no flowers. It was selling religious articles like holy pictures, statues, and ofcourse, rosaries. The customer felt a twinge of disappointment. But he liked the peaceful atmosphere of the religious stall. While leaving he couldn’t resist requesting the shopkeeper to please spell ROSARY correctly.

The customer had reached the end of the row of shops, and he was empty handed. A waste of time, an exercise in futility. Are there lessons to be learnt from this shopping expedition?

There is a school of psychology called Transactional Analysis, which applies to inter-personal relationships. In like manner a shopkeeper-buyer contact is also a transaction. In the aforesaid instances we find that the customer was looking for something that he didn’t find, despite the initial attraction of the external signboard. Each transaction was different. As a businessman of many years experience, I can vouch with authority that sales and marketing are all in the mind. The classic 4P’s in sales are - Price, Product, Placement and Publicity. What went wrong in these transactions? In the case of –ATA the carelessness of the shopkeeper left the customer bewildered. HARDWARES’ definition and understanding had changed. He was out of sync with the times. MADHUSHALA was deliberately misleading for those not in the know. The SUPERMARKET was an overkill, its very strength becoming its weakness. The ROSERY was just slightly off the mark. But then so often in business, sports or life itself, a hair’s breadth is all that makes the difference between winning and losing. Going off on a slight tangent can result in a wide margin of error.

So we need to analyse these transactions. Sometimes the product was wrong, sometimes the price, the placement or even the publicity (projection). Can we now juxtapose these shopping transactions on the church? Is our product selling? Is our placement correct? What about our pricing, and finally what is our publicity or rather public image (projection or common perception)?

For this we need to use another management technique – of backward integration. In this case we need to employ the principle of cause and effect. From the effect, let us work backwards to the root cause, just as a doctor diagnoses a disease from its symptoms. So what image does the church project? What message is it giving? This can be ascertained from what people are coming to us for. I won’t go to a Bata shop to buy tea, or a Tata shop to buy shoes.

I recall a missionary priest bemoaning that people only came to him asking for money, and the principal of a convent school lamenting that people only came to her for admissions! Such admissions (pun intended) are revealing. They are telling us that indeed that is all that we have to offer. Conversely we may ask, “How many people come to us asking for spiritual solace, healing or peace? How many come seeking refuge from injustice or strife?” We cannot generalise, but the answers could be revealing.

We must learn from the mistakes or misrepresentations of the five shopkeepers. Even a minor error like the spelling of Rosary had a negative impact. So too many good and zealous Christians don’t cut much ice in society for minor errors – be it in language, dress or liturgy. A small change could make a big difference.

From projections (exterior image) we could move to internal dispositions. We will again apply the process of reverse integration for a proper diagnosis. Where there is sugar, the ants will come. On the other hand, as Jesus said “Where there is a corpse, there the vultures will gather” (Mat 24:28). Are we sweet sugar (amrit), or a stinking corpse? Are ants or vultures attracted to us? Ants are always seeking, hardworking and communitarian. In contrast, the vultures are lazy, selfish and greedy, always on the lookout for a kill. If our constant refrain is that our people are lazy and greedy, then we are castigating ourselves; that we are a corpse, devoid of the Anima Christi. We are far from being Corpus Christi, the living body of the resurrected Jesus. Food for thought – for ants or vultures? Double entendre!

Let us get our price, product, placement and publicity correct. Let us be wise shopkeepers. In today’s market economy only the best will survive the competition. So too in the economy of salvation, there is no more protectionism or exclusivism. Sell or sink.