Question
How does the behavior of consumers in India differ from that of consumers in the US or Europe?
Answer
Low brand-consciousness, much higher price sensitivity and much more likely to do a lot of DIY repair and maintenance and keep things working with a lot of patched-up repair.
That's the traditional middle class. There's also an emerging globalized middle class that acts like Western consumers.
The "inexperienced buying" perception is highly mistaken. Mostly I'd say they are more sophisticated, not less, with a keen eye for real value, strong bullshit detectors and far more savvy than you'd think even around products/services that are new to the country. What you may see as "inexperienced" is actually just "difference" and the fact that unlike Americans, they haven't been domesticated and told how to think by Mad Men. They actually tend to think for themselves, which American consumers haven't done on a large scale since 1930 or so. This tendency is reinforced by the high degree of cultural fragmentation and the relatively low ability of national pop culture (Bollywood and cricket) to influence the market. This is also what makes branding harder and brand awareness harder to create. Positioning requires influential extant narratives to work with, and these are far more local and numerous in India than in America. Which is why the few that exist (like cricket) get overloaded.
The difference is in two cultural attitudes.
First, it's a culture where consumption is not about status or ostentation outside of a few narrow categories like silk saris, cars, jewelry, houses and so forth. Americans by contrast turn every purchase into a status signal. So American marketers trying to position and differentiate based on social status can be in for a surprise when even rich people act like poor people in many purchase categories.
The second behavior is related: a very high tolerance for poor quality. It's known as the "chalta hai" ("it will do") attitude, and extends beyond buying to basically everything. There is a very poor culture of quality consciousness (except in a few areas like food, where people will yell for sub-par food). As a result, the market is a huge flood of third rate stuff. There is a corresponding unwillingness to pay for high quality. This is actually quite a rational response to the environment, and has a long history.
That's the traditional middle class. There's also an emerging globalized middle class that acts like Western consumers.
The "inexperienced buying" perception is highly mistaken. Mostly I'd say they are more sophisticated, not less, with a keen eye for real value, strong bullshit detectors and far more savvy than you'd think even around products/services that are new to the country. What you may see as "inexperienced" is actually just "difference" and the fact that unlike Americans, they haven't been domesticated and told how to think by Mad Men. They actually tend to think for themselves, which American consumers haven't done on a large scale since 1930 or so. This tendency is reinforced by the high degree of cultural fragmentation and the relatively low ability of national pop culture (Bollywood and cricket) to influence the market. This is also what makes branding harder and brand awareness harder to create. Positioning requires influential extant narratives to work with, and these are far more local and numerous in India than in America. Which is why the few that exist (like cricket) get overloaded.
The difference is in two cultural attitudes.
First, it's a culture where consumption is not about status or ostentation outside of a few narrow categories like silk saris, cars, jewelry, houses and so forth. Americans by contrast turn every purchase into a status signal. So American marketers trying to position and differentiate based on social status can be in for a surprise when even rich people act like poor people in many purchase categories.
The second behavior is related: a very high tolerance for poor quality. It's known as the "chalta hai" ("it will do") attitude, and extends beyond buying to basically everything. There is a very poor culture of quality consciousness (except in a few areas like food, where people will yell for sub-par food). As a result, the market is a huge flood of third rate stuff. There is a corresponding unwillingness to pay for high quality. This is actually quite a rational response to the environment, and has a long history.