Supermarket Wisdom

A short while spent in a nearby supermarket was a good learning experience. The first thing that I learnt – objectively – is that this blog is not widely read, in fact not read at all (judging from Internet standards). Although this fact can be easily judged by using a simple cookie-based internet statistic i.e. number of hits or views, I can still not tell how many actually read the bally thing. The supermarket provided me more. You see, Cadbury’s Twirl® is off the shelves and has been replaced by little chunks wrapped in aluminum foil from Belgium with a name that doesn’t even sound chocolaty. I recall that I had raved quite a bit about Twirl® even though the name didn’t convey completely what a sensual delight it really is. The important thing is that it is off the racks ergo, readership is abysmal.

This shop even had board games to sell. The overflowing shelves a sign of our current age and time. That set of racks is a gauge, a dipstick measure of where our society stands. The learning – kids don’t play board games any more. Most good games require a fair amount of cognitive ability and are targeted at kids above the age of 8. Today, kids above the age of 8 are already exposed to internet banality, so right there is the screw. This disturbance directly affects the cost of these games. A good game like Scotland Yard® or Monopoly® costs upwards of 400 smackers! Internet costs 250 a month. The difference is not the 200 odd smackers; it’s the fact that a year later you can either have a brainier kid who can plan, strategize, execute and think, that costed 400 bucks plus time; or a 3000 bucks worth idiot without a conscience. That overflowing shelf shows that we are more interested in the latter kind of youth.

Getting a little hungry, I move next to the biscuits and quick eats section. There is a lot of variety now or so it seems on the surface with 5 rows about 15 feet long full of biscuits. On closer inspection – the variety is only in the packaging – the Emperor’s new clothes phenomenon. I see 4 major players – Parle, Sunfeast, Britannia, Unibic and some lesser players True, Horlicks, McVities, Complan, PriyaGold, Boost and others. Owing to some experiential conditioning, I picked Unibic’s Coco-Nut® Cookies and was deeply disappointed with myself. They turned out to be…well… coconut biscuits and not Cocoa-nut. Unibic tried wordplay without wordplay, Coco-Nut® is mighty ambiguous. Britannia, once a market leader, now shares the market almost evenly with the other three. The makers of absolutely mind-blowing eats like Pure Magic®, Embassy Cream®, Swiss Roll®, and the original Marie® are now focussing on healthy alternatives – high fibre, low fat biscuits and doing well. Sunfeast tried competing with Multi-grain but even Sachin Tendulkar couldn’t help. Sunfeast now occupies a major chunk of the budget glucose and cream biscuits share which it stole from Britannia. Parle competes well in budget biscuits while its trump card remains Hide & Seek® chocolate biscuits. The other players are into milk and glucose and basic orange, mango and pineapple cream biscuits. When you look at a general key buying factors for biscuits. People want cheap, tasty, and healthy. It used to be just tasty but the rise of cost and disease brought in the other two factors.

Beverage department is now overcrowded – almost all players are into health and energy drinks. The once abundant Coke and Pepsi bottles now occupy corners and small dedicated refrigerators. All fruit juices are packaged for identity. These are all filled with the same juice.

Digressing from market study, my head wandered off into thought. The consumer eats industry draws its fundamentals from facts that are analogous to what makes people different — Human Being + Value System. This value system is what separates nations and presently its this same value system that is crumbling. It’s all juice and bakery, humans are humans; but what separates is the value attached to it. This value will be, more often than not, a reflection of values that as a nation, we possess. The stuff in supermarkets right now appeal to the senses superficially – what’s inside is of low value. This is the value, kids are now exposed to in schools – it doesn’t require teaching. The sheer lack of any guidance, and role models automatically influence low value thought.

Some high value products and brands that today are struggling -

• Britannia shifted its focus from its regular portfolio of products to healthy eats – it didn’t fall prey to new age marketing of high visibility – low value, as a result it lost share but retained value – Eat healthy, Think Better®
• Cream-cracker biscuits retain the value but not popularity – it’s too bland for today’s tongues
• Tea survives only at homes, in a mall its a non-entity; home is where the value is – Coffee is designed for pop culture – it can be made dark/light/cold/frothy/sugar-less/sugary and be served with ice-cream

These survive only because these are reflections of a few to whom value matters more and there is still hope.

Well, that’s that. I have exceeded my usual target word limit of 500 by another 500. Hopefully the other 500 added value. What shall I get into next?

NOTE: VIEWS EXPRESSED HERE ARE PERSONAL OPINIONS AND DO NOT REPRESENT MASS STANDINGS