Instead of comparing Indian market conditions with other emerging economies, and replicating their earlier success models here, the global firms wanting to have a share in the one billion consumer market pie should consider India as a standalone market, says a top market expert. | |
| "Most market analysts and business strategists bark up the wrong tree when they evaluate the Indian opportunity by asking the question-when will India have the per capita income and infrastructure of China, per capita consumption of Brazil, the education level of Russia and institutional framework of USA," market strategist Rama Bijapurkar says in her book, 'We are like that only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India'. |
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| Even though numerous multinational companies came to India hoping to have a share of arguably the largest untapped market in the world, what they got instead was hungry yet astute consumers who bargain on anything from taxi fare to interest rates. |
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| "Evaluating India through a comparative lens will lead to an inevitable conclusion that 'now' will never be a good time to enter a market of a billion consumers, US dollar one trillion GDP, growing at 8 per cent to 9 per cent, because it will probably never catch up with the benchmark 'someplace else'," Bijapurkar says. |
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| When evaluated through a standalone lens, the glass of market attractiveness is half full and half empty. However, there are several signs that would lead one to believe the glass is filling ¿ maybe not as fast as we would like it to, but the water level is definitely rising with each passing year, Bijapurkar says. |
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| Considered one of the leading consultants on market strategy and consumer behaviour, Bijapurkar has tried to make sense of the complex Indian market. |
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| Indians are not wannabe Western, the author warns the global firms' heads, who think of replicating success stories of West in India. Euro RSCG, a leading advertising agency, polled over 2,000 young people in the top eight cities in India, in the age group of 15-30. The key finding was that they preferred Indian brands, looks and environments to bring up their children. |
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| They actually believed that personal care products made for India worked better than the imported ones "" a huge movement from the 1960s and 70s, when there was a premium on imported goods. |
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| Indian is the brand they are proud to belong to and aspire to make it even better. So any product or service moulded to suit with ethnic environment would do better than something with which they don't relate with. |
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| Bijapurkar writes that consumer India's demand structure is fundamentally different from that of the developed markets. It is a nation of 'under doers'. |
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| If the instruction on the pack of any product, from detergent to baby food says two tablespoons, Indian consumer would use just one. Consumer India cannot afford to consume more, but wants to participate in consumption. |
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| The consumption logic that drives the lower one-third or half of Consumer India is different from the consumption logic that drives the rest of India- ven for the same product. When gel toothpastes first came into the market, while the marketer intended it to be a statement of modernity and new generation toothpastes, the lower income end of the toothpaste consumers adopted it. |
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| "We squeeze that last drop out of everything. And to many Western minds, this may not make any sense but we have a thrift culture and it runs across all kinds of consumers. To an outsider we may seem inscrutable perhaps even strange, but 'we are' as the book title suggests, 'like that only'," she says. |
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| Writing about the idea of 'My Target India' she says the ideal category for this could be the self employed India, who might be offered a whole slew of specially tailored products and services with innovative pricing and delivery systems. |
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| Self-employed people in India have distinct needs that drive their consumption behaviour. They are different from employed people anywhere else in the world because in India most formal support systems like healthcare, pensions or even easy access to rented apartments has been typically build around employers. |
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