Are MBA applicants already a Buyer2.0 Generation?

For most B-schools, the biggest puzzle that remains unsolved for many years is the way to engage applicants with their institute's brand and other important factors - leading to Admits of some of the best applicants available in the current pool.

Considering Indian B-schools' plights, this problem takes a much larger shape and at most times even the surface of the issue isn't addressed by the staff of these seemingly floating entities.

There have been many ways that I have tried explaining the micro factors that need to be considered by the majority of b-schools in India, in order to top-grade their intakes, brand recognition, and overall development of the institution. I have explained to them how the applicants base in India is polarized in their decision making (70% of all MBA applicants wish to apply to not more than 15% of available b-schools in India). I have also pointed out the ways they can actually identify the position of their b-school from the "Perceptual Barrier" and then close in with some measurable steps to be considered as a top rank institution in India.

In all my cases to these b-schools, one important factor has always remained common - that of the new and dynamic persona of their MBA applicant - who is now a graduated Buyer2.0 persona.

Now what is so very important about people with such personas (Buyer2.0)?
Ans: The following diagram will provide some idea about the attributes of Buyer2.0:

The buyer (in this case the MBA applicant) has gone through a fundamental shift in behavior and consumption of communications. This is a fact that has been ignored over the last 5 years and I fear that it may still not be dissected and perused by our b-schools in the near future.

Some of the important Characteristics that this Buyer2.0 might have are:

1) He will be "high" on net savvy scores, and knows about social media tools & their usage
2) He contributes (via comments, feedback, curation, etc) across the important platform in the world-wide-web that matter to similar Personas of buyers
3) He networks with other buyers2.0 through various platforms and collectively can generate content that will influence the early and late followers of these platforms
4) He will not be waiting for Advertisements and emailers to reach him for making decisions. He will search and engage with forums and communities across the internet to figure out the buying-choices
5) He is not an impulsive shopper. He will not probably follow the Click-See-Buy process at one-go. He understands the rules of engagement by marketers and therefore will have a longer buying cycle
6) He will not think twice about providing negative feedback and then scout for support within the community for more negative inputs on the brand. He will have the power to bring down the brand-scores to NIL
7) He hates SPAM, cold calls, and would want to control conversations. They have "preferences" on the time of meetings, communications and would dislike any push communications thrown at them my marketers

The important question now is - Are the top-teams at our Indian B-schools even aware and sensitized about this very important fact??

I can safely bet (from the travails in meeting most of the b-schools in India), that they are not even bothered about the existence of such a thing, and I guess it will need probably an agency or some announcement of a new Ad-Format from Google/FB that mentioned Buyer2.0, to get to the hard-rock-brains of our b-schools owners.

This challenge is a current one and needs an excellent team to identify and then design marketing communications based on the same. All new Ad formats and other marketing logic (like Click-to-action, etc) can be referred to this phenomenon and I certainly believe that most of what I have written before this can be explained in a better way if I start with this challenge.

It can also lead to a wild rat-race, wherein by the time our b-schools get to understand this factor and catch-up, we might be looking at a Buyer3.0 Personas making the buy decisions.