Thursday, October 2, 2014

RETAIL SPECIAL............................. Eight Things We Learnt about the Indian Shopper From Supermarketwala

Eight Things We Learnt about the Indian Shopper From Supermarketwala

A range of nuggets – everything from why Indians want to be 

crowded to how misri became prasad


I have no interest in large-scale retail and no long-term plans to persuade the kirana store customer to convert to the shiny new mall I’m building. This is the purported purpose of this new book by Damodar Mall (has ever a man had a more occupational joke-appropriate surname?). I am not convinced that this is not something of a ruse – a ‘buy this toothpaste because dentists give it to their kids’ gambit. You think that if the books are meant for the almost-Biyanis and quasi-Ambanis then maybe I should get my hands on it too? Whatever. You’d have to be a highly incurious sort of human being to be not intrigued and entertained by some of the revelations of this breezy, cheerful book.
1. “If you leave a space measuring more than your forearm – from the tip of your finger to your elbow – between you and the person just ahead of you in a queue, in India, such a gap is not feasible to sustain. It shall get bridged or occupied within five minutes.”
This is one of the interesting results from a study done on Mall’s request across India from temples, colleges and train stations to malls, multiplexes and wedding parties. But Mall’s interpretation of these results is even more fun. He says Indians value what he calls the ‘elbow push factor’ in different ways from the Western shopper. Luxury stores, built with plenty of room so no one needs to jostle (based on the understanding of the Western shopper), are looked upon suspiciously by the Indian shopper as forlorn and empty, not as peaceful and serene. “People actually felt reassured by a certain polite level of elbow push, a certain amount of crowding as long as it does not degenerate into disorder and chaos.”
2. The existence of the female customer shaped the Indian fitness business way before Karisma Kapoor started exercising in tights.
Talwalkars (est. 1932) is convinced that their huge success – 175 branches in 65 cities – is entirely because way back in 1943, Vishnupant Talwalkar was the first Indian gym owner to welcome women, instantly positioning it as a ‘family’ space and not a rippling, bronzed, grunting male one, which is what the akhaaras were. In one of the book’s funniest ‘unself-conscious tycoon’ quotes, Prashant Talwalkar (current head of the empire and grandson of Vishnupant) says, “There’s nothing wrong with lady personal trainers in gyms wearing hot pants. Our male patrons may like it, too. But it does not pass the test of having a congenial, comfortable atmosphere for women patrons. So Talwalkar’s will not do it.”
3. The Indian customer is no longer impressed by readymade clothes in the way s/he once was.
Her traditional access to highly customized clothes (via tailoring) is something she still values. She is repulsed by the sight of the same clothes in a few dozen sizes in the way it is offered by modern retailers. So who gets it right? According to Mall, it’s the traditional retailers, including old-fashioned jewellers, whose shop assistants feed customer preferences back into production. These stores create endless minor variations so every customer feels like they’ve got something no one else has. These Indian stores and… Zara (surprise! Start at minute 1:04 of the video Shit Delhi Girls Say!). Zara with its fruit fly length design cycles works just fine for the Indian shopper frantic for something non-standard that will allow her to put off the search for That Magic Tailor.
4. Indians have been apparently buying millions of fridges and, this is important, have been buying bigger fridges.
But what we are doing with these fridges does not quite follow the Western trajectory. We are still terrified by leftovers. Leftovers are only okay if you can bung them into the transmogrification machine. To quote Mall, “Google search ‘recipes, leftover rice’. While half the world eats rice and therefore has ‘leftover rice’, the recipes to rework it and make it refreshingly new and hot are overwhelmingly Indian.
5. Also on the Indian fridge front, we are wildly suspicious of actual ready-to-eat foods.
Indian households are instead filling their fridge with what Mall calls work-in-progress foods – batters, pastes, mixes, packets of vegetables cut for Chinese stir-fry or sambhar. According to Mall’s research, the Indian middle-class household would rather get a cook (full-time or part-time) or even outsource special festival cooking to what he calls a “neighbourhood aunty” – informal catering operations run by women. As long as the illusion of making something from scratch and the illusion of customization exists, the Indian grocery shopper is willing to try anything from pesarattu batter to maple syrup
6. Young Indian women like to shop for groceries in malls and supermarkets because of the anonymity. 
Mall points to an annoying and hilariously recognizable phenomenon. You love your neighbourhood store because it stocks the brands your household likes and remembers it. But what if you are a young woman who doesn’t want to know what the kirana store guy thinks of you for buying expensive fabric conditioner or a private stash of Lay’s chips. Mall calls it the Shopkeeper-in-law situation. “A significant clue lies in the manner in which the young bahu addresses the grocer. It is with the same respect that she would use with a senior member of the family. ‘Panditji, Guptaji, Anna, Gauru, or Bhaisaheb’ are the norm. Most of the time, the fan is directed on him and the customer has to sweat it out at the counter. She might be giving him her custom but he is the one patronizing her.” How glorious the long, empty, anonymous aisles of supermarkets and malls must seem in contrast where you can buy denim-coloured condoms. In bulk
7. Indians are obsessed with long, black hair on women.
You colour your hair to cover the greys or for the very occasional, very youthful lark. Really you just want a trim and say no in an embarrassed manner when the funky stylist suggests taking a few inches off. Mall says, “Paradoxically, the biggest offering in salons in India has to do with hair, even though that’s what Indians need the least… Even though the ratio of spend on skin versus hair is 60:40, with only 10 per cent of the revenue coming from styling. In salon imagery, of course, the opposite is true. All of us have seen gigantic posters of exquisitely styled hair in salons, most of these sponsored by L’Oreal, the industry leader by far.” Mall goes on to write about YLG, a young and extremely successful Bangalore-based chain of salons – 34 salons in 5 years. YLG says they did it by ignoring the MNC dogma and switching their focus to a very big, juicy range of skincare services
8. One of Mall’s most intriguing nuggets is about prasad. How did particular foods become inseparable from particular pujas?
Every celebration is accompanied by food that was once upon a time considered exotic. In the days of cooking at home from scratch with local raw ingredients, fasting items like sabudana, rajgira (amaranth) atta, bhagar (wild rice), sweet potato and festival foods made with besan, maida, dates, sevaiyan, sherbet and exotic fruits, were actually processed in distant factories or imported from far-away places. Weren’t they the equivalent of what olives and tofu mean to the young women today, for our great grandmothers way back in that day or age?” asks Mall.
Enough already. You’ve blown our minds with the thought that the misri of maakhan misri was once a cool, new thing that came from Egypt (aka Misr in Hindi).

https://in.news.yahoo.com/eight-things-we-learnt-about-the-indian-shopper-from-supermarketwala-052122048.html

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