Retailing has become really high tech and many changes have been witnessed in the grocery retail market world. Unlike in the West, there are now two parallel destinations for grocery shopping for the same household in urban middle class India. When it comes to core categories of milk, flour or rice, spices and pulses, by and large the provider is still the neighborhood parents. And in most of the cases it is usually, if not typically, handled by the domestic help.
Urban Indian housewife, to keep in pace with society status walks into a modern supermarket, and walks out with a branded shopping bag that signifies her arrival as a modern consumer who understands and is a part of -advanced shopping patterns. Many of us talk about which sector will survive the organized or the traditional trade in India. Well where Indians are concerned, both stand a fair chance provided they meet the customer norms:
THE AVAILABILITY FACTOR
Irrespective of what the store looks like most of us are buying grocery from family-operated grocery enterprise. If you suddenly find yourself needing extra bread at 9 in the evening, it will be the neighborhood trader who will supply it either via a quick phone call or an urgent sprint by the domestic help. Availability and convenience are prime considerations for the customers even over price and certainly over packaging. The important thing is that the product is available and is convenient to get when you want it. There is no emotion attached to this entire need and purchase equation. It is, simply, the most convenient thing to do.
THE EMOTION FACTOR
With the pressure to keep in pace with a modern lifestyle, you feel the need of shopping jaunts and spiffy international brands, thank you very much. Here, shopping is not a chore, but a virtual announcement of sorts. You walk into a modern supermarket with rows and rows of choice and selection. You are influenced by the sheer emotion of branding and breathing the air of category managed temperature-controlled, English-speaking-sales-staffed modern retail in India.
IMPULSE BUYING
Impulse buying can occur when a potential consumer spots something related to a product that stirs a particular passion in them. Marketers and retailers tend to exploit these impulses which are tied to the basic need for instant gratification. This is the emotion that is feeding the phenomenon of impulse buying in modern food and grocery stores across urban India. To my mind, this is the first stage of the Indian homemakers climb up the retail consumer status ladder. Here the drivers are experience and status. Not availability or convenience. Not even price.
THE PACKAGING FACTOR
The packaging fulfilling the functional need of the consumer would be a factor to be considered. If retailers in India are on a learning curve, it is also the consumer who is testing the waters.
Indian customers are more aware than they were 20 or even 10 years ago, but there is still a lot that one does not understand about choice. For far too long Indian consumers lived in the bliss that comes from ignorance, but they are finally getting used to the wake up call.