Most Indians are not ‘Shoppers’. They are ‘Buyers’

Is this just a matter of semantics? Decide for yourself – read on!

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a shopper as one who is shopping. It also defines a buyer as a person who buys!

Rather simplistic don’t you think?!

Looking at these definitions from a shopper research perspective, we think a shopper is a person who is in shopping mode – searching, browsing, comparing, seeking out value in whatever form it matters and going through a rather elaborate dance with the brands available.

On the other hand, a buyer comes across more as someone on a mission, buying what he needs/wants, picking up brands that are important to him or ones used for years, not browsing but leaving the store in an attempt to break the speed shopping record on each visit.

Agree? No?? Either way, here are some interesting findings.

- Our recent research at unorganized retail in India shows us that 80% of people surveyed spent less than 10 minutes at the store. They came, they bought, they left!
- We also found that most shoppers came alone to the traditional stores
- And the average basket size was less than Rs.100 at these kirana stores

Add to this the well known fact that over 90% of Indian retail is still unorganized, and it seems like we now have an arguable case – most Indians are buyers more than shoppers!

But this is not as much about semantics and definitions as it is about how this would impact shopper insights.

Would buyer behaviour differ greatly from shopper behaviour? In situations where decision making is fast (or has already happened) the window of exposure and opportunity for brands is short. So can POP in extreme cases even be perceived as an irritant? What do brands do?

We believe this merits discussion and here are some thoughts.

We notice two significant trends in India that will impact this entire discussion.

1. People are increasingly becoming more time starved, multitaskism is the new religion and mothers are deciding what to buy at the store while they are driving back from work and in between calls from the office

2. The standard of living is on the increase. This is not just in a GDP sense but also in terms of willingness to spend. In fact, a recent HSBC survey of Affluent Asians found that 68% of affluent Indians reported an increase in their wealth in the last 6 months!

Would just these two fairly well documented trends alone not have important implications on stock up trips (more the modern trade offering) as well as top up trips (the stronghold of traditional stores)?

Will there not be a number of category wise implications as well? If time is money, will people spend less time on low involvement categories when they are under time pressure? What about high involvement categories? Is more time spent on out of store research in order to reduce time spent Instore?

So is it not finally a trend of ‘changing value of time’? Should brands change their packaging to make it easy to read and quick to buy? What does this mean for retailers? Sell onions along with underwear to save the shopper time??

Clearly more questions than answers. What do we think?

- With due reverence to The Oxford English Dictionary, we think buyers are a kind of shoppers
- We think that there is a certain ‘path to purchase’ that varies depending on a set of factors (both external and internal)
- We think that understanding the differences between shopper behaviour and buyer behaviour plays a crucial role in ‘managing’ shopper behaviour and ‘influencing’ buyer behaviour
- We think that merchandising done with only an understanding of one of these segments can actually cause damage with the other segment! For example, merchandising or packaging done to please the shopper who has time can completely turn off the buyer who is short on time!

Any which way you look at it, this is definitely not a discussion that can be concluded easily whether you have the time or not ! What do you think?

Gopi Krishnaswamy

Gopi Krishnaswamy is the CEO of Insight Instore