Rationality has to be traded via money: generally, only after a period of time and through an analysis could people understand how many mistakes they have made. It also reflects the value of postmortem analysis. There are two cases to illustrate this point.
1. Advertisement investment needs to focus on local characteristics.
Generally, FMCG has peak seasons. For instance, Spring Festival is the peak season for the sales of New Year goods, and winter is the off-season for ice cream. In addition to seasonal differences, there are also regional differences.
For example, Shenzhen and Guangzhou are the mature markets for a certain food group, with small fluctuations in sales throughout the year. But the mainland is not the same, with two peak seasons during a year, the sales of which can account for more than 50% of the whole year. It is blameless for the company to invest a lot of advertising resources for propaganda in high season. But the person responsible for the national investment, when making plans, does not take into account the regional differences in terms of the peak season. Therefore, a lot of advertisements are put in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, which are not cheap anyway and cost a lot of money. Of course, there is basically no effect, because the consumer goods of the mature markets are subject to little effect of these advertisements, the fact of which can also be seen from the practical sales. But at that time we did not associate the advertisement with the regionalism of the peak season and only realize this point after many years of operation. This lesson is worth of several million dollars.
2. Promotional costs also need to pay attention to local characteristics.
A lot of things, when accumulated to a certain extent, can be brought together to be compared diachronically and synchronically, from which you can draw many rules and which can provides you with a lot of basis for the judgment of rationality.