BOOKMARK

Changing face of Indian consumer

By Manju Gupta

A Little Less Conversation, Tom Asacker, Macmillan Publishers India Ltd, Pp 188(PB), Rs 225.00

consumers are changing rapidly in their likings and the book presents a case for marketers to go beyond just hard selling benefits and looks for great value connect with consumers to build engagement and involvement. The author of this book says that you can no longer benchmark and model the past in order to be successful in the future because the future is changing too fast and unpredictably. The consumers of the 21st-century marketplace are much different from those of years past. They are also unlike consumers in emerging markets as they are far more experienced, sceptical, savvy and connected; they have much different attention spans, mindsets, motivations, media habits, sources of social influence and most importantly, marketplace desires.
In this book, branding expert Tom Asacker explains precisely how today’s successful brands are different from others. Branding, as media-based image-making and persuasive communication, is rapidly losing effectiveness and customers have learned to tune out the irrelevant chapter of dispassionate messaging and uninspired employees; customers are not only inundated with a kudzu-like explosion of products and services and outlets but also getting drowned in information, media choices and commercial messages. It is like a perfect story of influences and confusion.
Five major trends in customer choices and how and what they choose have emerged – the first one is that today’s customer is supersaturated with choices. He wants control as he is now well informed and savvy and may want to participate in the way marketing of the product is concerned. Customers access their stored memory which sets the train of associations in motion. They watch, ignore, get more information, try it, that is, they screen and reason with their guts before taking action.
Customers are anxious about time, money, relationship, how to live and how to make choices. They are on the lookout for better value and want the brands they choose to be reliable and fair besides looking and doing good.
The author is of the view that the Western society has turned its attention away from the future towards the near term, so that most people use the marketplace as a diversion. They tackle it with an emotional logic; they want to experience novelty and the pleasures of consumption, leisure and well-being; they want to lose themselves in new challenges and experiences; they want to control their personal near-term future and better themselves physically and mentally; they want to feel good about themselves and their decisions and so they are constantly on the lookout for something that suits them better in these pursuits. So to succeed in business today means “to tune in to this new consumer reality and to be better at orchestrating and delivering that ‘value’.” So, appeal to today’s consumer psyche in order to be successful at the marketplace for products, services, entertainment and ideas, says the author.
(Macmillan Publishers India Ltd, 2/10 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi–110002; www.macmillanpublishersindia.com)