Retail Marketing Assignment

Name: Adarsh J Naik

Roll No: 20192301

DECODING INDIAN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

This is a summary of the session by Mr. Ankur Warikoo, Co-Founder and CEO
of Nearbuy.com who talks about his perception of the art of selling to Indian
consumers. The first thing a marketer should understand is that everything a consumer
does in terms of a transaction is an intersection of their time and money. We can create
a 2x2 matrix which is classified into quadrants where each quadrant is as follows,
consumer has money, consumer doesn’t have money, consumer has time, and
consumer doesn’t have time. These are the quadrants to which we must assign each
consumer of the country. In terms about the Indian consumer perspective, India is a
time rich and money poor country where as the United States is a money rich and time
poor country. He gives us an explanation on how Indian consumers spend ample time
window shopping and when buying something on the internet consumers seem to
check multiple websites, make sure they visit offline stores as well and even travel just
to save money. Indian consumer at the end of the day look at saving money
irrespective of the total time consumed, whereas it is the complete opposite in United
States, consumers there don’t consider it an unnecessary expense when they pay to
have same day shipping, faster data speed or priority customer service. They value
their time and don’t think too much on spending money for the service they receive.

The biggest mistake a marketer can make is to assume that the consumer stays
in the same quadrant throughout their lifetime. Ankur gives a great example where he
explains that a consumer A, would spend hours checking at deals at apps, websites,
and calling up nearby lounges/pubs when they want to spend time having a drink with
their friends/colleagues after office. The same consumer would behave differently
when they want to spend time with their family, they wouldn’t mind spending the extra
cash to make sure that food quality or service isn’t poor. They tend to spend more in
this scenario and when it comes to spending money on a vacation for their parents the
same consumer would spend a lot more to ensure that their parents would have the
best experiences. In this way, we can see that the same consumer ends up spending
differently for different situations and perceives the spending limit as either too much
or too little. This is where we marketers make mistakes in bucketing such consumers
in the same quadrant and wrongly targeting them with products which they wouldn’t
feel attracted to.
 Another brilliant example with respect to customer service given by Ankur is
when a customer called up the customer service team furious that he had been
cheated when there was a deal for a pair of shorts for Rs. 999/- instead of the usual
Rs. 2000/-. The customer expected two shorts for 999 instead of the one which he
received. This could be due to the lack of understanding the customer had of the
language or any other reason. They took this scenario as a feedback and incorporated
a change in their offering description where they added (1 piece) every time a pair was
mentioned so that the consumer would understand it easily. Ankur shared the another
exchange with a customer where this change created mistrust among the consumers
where the company had a collaboration with an Eye hospital and were providing a
good deal on laser eye surgery. In this scenario, where they had mentioned “laser
surgery for a pair of eyes” the customer clarified where it was for one eye or two as (1
piece) which was frequently mentioned in other offering descriptions created a clash
and a sense of mistrust for the customer. With this example he shared the idea that
all consumer transactions in India start with Mistrust, we can see this clearly in
advertisements of house paint where the idea of society accepting the new painted
house and the neighbors loving it is the main message instead of the product features
which would be lead free etc. Therefore it is important to try to win over the customer
in a brand environment which doesn’t start with trust. We must understand the concept
of consumer that it starts with mistrust, so start your communications with the product
experience rather than the features.

He speaks about how effective a communication is after building trust, he tells

us an example where people usually didn’t show up to their new jobs on the first day
even after accepting the offer. To curb this he used the same idea used by Kunal
Shah, he sent the employee a set of business cards and a MacBook with a note
attached which said that the company is waiting for the new employee. This gesture
created a feeling of trust which reduced the absenteeism rate.

The last section is about how most of us consider and perceive ourselves as
middle class even when we are not. He explains that an individual to be part of the
middle class category should earn somewhere between 8-12 thousand rupees a
month. By this he makes the audience understand that considering ourselves a part
of the middle class category by comparing ourselves to the ultra-rich is wrong. This
isn’t an accurate representation of the core consumer class in the market. Having a
perception that what I would feel like or what my buying decisions would be the same
and would reflect the decisions taken by the middle class market would be unjust and
hence many products fail, the marketing communication fails to connect. He also
speaks about the impulse decision which results in 89% of offline movie ticket sales
of a leading multiplex and the fact that only 46% of users book their ticket online. He
tells us that the market knowledge, consumer behavior we think we know isn’t mostly
accurate at time because we can’t relate to the real consumers out there.
The key takeaways from this session was.

1. Everything a consumer does in terms of a transaction is an intersection of their

time and money.
2. To clearly study and understand the defining reason how consumers make
consumer choices.
3. India is a trust deficient country and everyone starts with a layer of mistrust.
4. To stop thinking that we are a reflection of our normal audience curve.
5. Consider shortening the gap of cultural differences to avoid bad customer and
brand experience.
6. How the current consumers operate online in terms of usage and purchase
behavior and how to target those who aren’t online.