India’s Women—Butterflies or Mrs. Rationalities
Posted on | May 4, 2008 | No Comments
by Fara Warner
This week I’ll be presenting at the Marketing to Women conference in Chicago and listening intently to my fellow presenters about the new tactics and strategies to reach women consumers. I’ll be blogging from the conference on Thursday, May 8.
For this blog, I’ll be taking yet another look at a country where women are increasingly important to their country’s economy. India—soon to be the world’s largest country—has boomed along with its Asian neighbor, China. And like China, its women have become a force as consumers and producers.
Technopak/The Knowledge Company, a management consulting firm, took a look at India’s most affluent consumers—a group of 280 million mostly urban-based consumers—to see what India’s burgeoning middle-class consumers were buying. The company broke women consumers into three intriguing categories that show how important it is to understand women both in a global and a local context. Here is a link to the complete research article.
The “butterflies†make up 50 percent of the women in the urban affluent class. As the nickname implies these women are all about the looks. They are moving rapidly to luxury goods, especially high-tech products like cellphones and MP3 players. But the second largest group—“old luxuryâ€â€”make up 32 percent and are not as much about the “bling.†These women have grown up with luxury, as the report notes, and may tend toward more traditional luxury goods.
Notably, the third group is called “Mrs. Rationality,†a nickname that reflects a more logical, less indulgent buying group. It would be easy to assume that affluent urban women would act and buy alike. But the differences in these three groups show how fast-paced change can shape and mold consumers in unusual ways.
The “butterflies†seem to be responding to the increased influence of global culture. They are drawn to broader social and cultural trends that we already have seen in more developed countries. As Business Week pointed out, traditionally women have been considered property—first of their parents and then of their husbands. But younger generations of women are increasingly more individualistic, more financially independent—much like their counterparts in more developed countries. Click on this link for the article.
This group of women—the butterflies—reflects how I believe we traditionally look at consumers in less-developed countries. We believe they will adopt more “Westernized†mores and traditions as they become more globally aware. Following on from that, we believe they will be drawn to marketing and brands that show those newly found cultural values. While that is true for some groups of consumers in countries such as India and China, we must remember that not all consumers will adopt completely this globalized view.
That’s why the “Mrs. Rationality†group is the most intriguing for me because it highlights the differences we can see among women in the same socio-economic class. This woman draws primarily from her traditional background. She is a saver, frugal and looking for value. She doesn’t define herself through expensive goods, but instead define herself through her rational choices to create a home for her family.
Look for my blog later this week on global marketing to women as well as my thoughts on the Marketing to Women conference.
Tags: Fara Warner > M2W > marketing to women > women in India
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