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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