New Delhi : On a bright Sunday morning Kusum just can't bear the sight of that boring packed cereal on her dinning table. Instead, she is yearning to have hot sizzling stuffed paranthas. But the idea of making the stuffing is too laborious and time consuming. If only, the stuffing was available in a `ready-to-cook' pack, she sighs.Kusum's aspirations and needs could have been perhaps fulfilled, if food marketers had looked beyond western cuisine while dishing out ready-to-eat or ready-to-cook food formats. That's the key learning from the first-ever national study on the food and grocery sector called GROFAST (Grocery and Food Advantage Study) conducted by KSA Technopak.
A great majority -73 per cent-of Indian consumers prefer traditional Indian meals rather than the more commonly-assumed western food, if given the choice. This is startling because conventional business wisdom has always assumed that the Indian consumer is averse to anything other than western cuisine in a ready-to-eat format.
``Food marketers are losing out on a big opportunity to garner a bigger share of the consumer's rupee by ignoring traditional Indian food,'' says Mr Rajan Chhibba, principal, KSA Technopak.
The study covered more than 10,000 consumers in the SEC A&B categories from 28 cities across India.
According to Mr Chhibba: ``The fact that most consumers are keen on ready-to-eat Indian meals is something quite unexpected. It's all the more remarkable because we found that it doesn't take all that much to make traditional meals available in a ready-to-eat or cook format. It's just that no one has ever though about it.''
The study gives unique insights into Indian consumer preferences across categories and meal occasions. Consider what we are willing-or not willing-to swallow:
Indian meal habits significantly differ from international trends:
The average US consumer has more than five meal occassions each day while the Indian SEC A/B consumer, on the average has less than 4.5 meals in the day. As a counterpoint, the average US meal at home has far less variety, with lesser side dishes and accompaniments. The Indian meal in general and the Indian dinner in particular has far more variety in terms of main courses and accompaniments. Indians are more comfortable accepting and even adopting meal habits of other regions in India than foreign meal habits. Acceptance of foreign meal habits is easier in the West.Indian meal occasions are more varied than most marketers think:
Penentration with milk, buns, namkeen is significant in the North. White beverages, plain milk, bread buns are consumed more in the West. South has significant incidence of coffee, white beverages, brown beverages, and traditional snacks consumption. Even for a meal occasion as basic as bed tea, the various choices that emerge are more than six: The Indian market is neither heterogenous nor as ``conventional wisdom'' driven as most marketers think. Significant opportunities exist in fulfillment of existing meal habit-needs as opposed to trying to create habit change. Competitive advantage will exist for those who offer winning propositions in the traditional food types.The Indian consumer has strong variety seeking behaviour:
Variety seeking is highest for evening snacks and dinner, which is seen as the main meal of the day and lowest for breakfast-as opposed to west where breakfast has a large variety of ``ready to eat'' options and dinner is a less varied menu.
In the US, seven basic meals cover 80 per cent of all ``dinner at home'' occassions. In contrast, in India 15 meal types cover over 60 per cent of the dinner at home occassions. The Indian consumer's propensity to experiment is limited for meals other than the evening snacks-variety seeking seems to be limited to a ``trusted menu''. Habit change is most difficult to the breakfast meal, and easiest for evening snacks and dinner.Health often decides the variety in menu:
75 per cent of the people consume 1-2 dishes in breakfast highlighting less variety in breakfast probably due to time constraint.However, for lunch and dinner, people seek variety even within the meal and take 3-4 dishes or more. r Health is the most important factor while deciding the menu for the Indian housewife. However, health is more than simply nutrition-complex mix of various drivers which varies according to family structures.Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
