Consumer India unraveled

We are like that only –Understanding the Logic of Consumer India by Rama Bijapurkar; Published by Penguin Portfolio; Price Rs. 495/-; pages 281.

by REPORTER@DAYAFTERINDIA.COM

Rama Bijapurkar has attempted to disabuse the mind of all those who have fixed notions of the consumer market of India. It is natural for manufacturers to be attracted to the ever increasing Indian market and not very uncommon to see them disillusioned as the market does not respond to their world view which has been so successful else where. The author explains why it happens and provides an insight of the psycho-socio responses of the people, the reasons, the contradictions and the illogicality thereof and how it ought to have been addressed.

The book is the result of scholarly study of the numbers and facts as well as the understanding of a mind that routinely assimilates contradictions. She brings home the fact that the modern and changing India has multiple layers of population and it is for the manufacturer to decide which segment he would like to woo and then draw a strategy accordingly. Importantly she gives indications as to how the aspiring and the satisfied need to be recognized and dealt with.

The book also answers a number of other questions. Will India be the world’s next consumption power house? Does the Indian middle class really exist? What is the exact purchasing power of this market and is there really a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid? Rama Bijapurkar answers all these questions and successfully fathoms how much Indians earn, how they consume, what they consume and what dictates their consumption choices? Interestingly, the book is liberally sprinkled with wit and humor that makes it interesting not only for the CEOs but also a common reader. For example, while explaining the contradiction between consumption figures and declared income of individuals, she says,’ consumption is like maternity, a certainty. Income is like paternity – a merely a matter of inference’. The fact of the matter is that ‘we are like that only’ and that is why the mantra to success is to offer the consumer, this with that’!