Not too long ago, chilling out in India meant going to watch movies, having a glass of beer in a pub, listening to music, or simply "hanging out" with friends. Today, the buzz words are "mall rats", coined from the US film of the same. ! Malls! They have become the new Temples in India. With fancy malls sprouting all over the place, they have become magnets for youth with money and families seeking to spend some time away from home. Most malls have incorporated multiplexes and restaurants.
"My friends and me just can't sit at home and watch TV". And even if I do not have serious shopping to do every day, we can't think of a better way to spend our time than hanging around in shopping malls, catching a bite and sitting at Barista [a coffee chain] for hours."
It seems only a little while ago when Crossroads in Tardeo in Mumbai was the first mall in the city.. At that time, the joke was that only the parking lot and McDonalds there made money. People came, saw, enjoyed the air-conditioning, and never shopped. ‘All that has changed’. Now, Phoenix Mills (renamed High Street Phoenix) is building a multi-storey car park to cater to the growing clientele. Malls have been the new weekend destinations for those choosing to stay in town.
Indeed, hanging out in the shopping malls that are cropping up in the country by scores is emerging as the new leisure activity of choice for India's "Generation Now", to whom, say psychologists, the concept of "have money, will spend" is changing to, "am depressed, will shop".
“A quick trip to the mall seems to be the new trend that is sweeping India's youngsters. They use it as a therapy to cure stress and tension, It is seen that when people are low and they hit the malls, they suddenly feel better." –a psychologist reports.
To check out the charms of the much-touted activity, as recommended by numerous Indian youngsters, and sometimes even their mothers, all one needs to do is to become a mall rat for a day. Be it one of the numerous sprawling and glitzy shopping malls that dot the landscapes of major Indian cities, or even a large department store in smaller cities like Patna that store owners there call malls - shopping malls all over the country are experiencing the birth of a new phenomenon as more and more Indians, particularly youngsters, frequent these air-conditioned heavens to escape the stifling summer heat and enjoy some "quality time"; even if many do not necessarily always splurge.
The impact of this trend on India's much-talked-about post-globalization consumerism of the country's youngsters - termed "indies" by the country's marketers - is clearly visible. "We have tripled our sales in Bangalore city in the last three years," says a marketing director of Levi’s jeans. He believes that this is largely due to the mall mania that is sweeping the 18-30 year age group.
Little wonder then that "catching 'em young and watch 'em grow" seems to have become the watchword of every marketer targeting the youth segment. Indian youngsters' spending and leisure habits are driving even global companies to design special products for these new young consumers. Standard Chartered Bank, for instance, is targeting these youngsters with products like the Visa "mini", which they say is 43% smaller than the regular card and has been positioned as a "cool accessory". The MTV Citibank Mastercard, too has gone in for a more exciting new look, a variant of its global "mc2" design. Both cards offer discounts at popular retail outlets and hangouts frequented by youngsters.
Reebok - the American sporting apparel brand - is taking them even more seriously. "We are in the process of setting up an internal study to understand how to target these youth," said a company spokesperson. And Airtel, the country's second largest mobile phone service provider, which estimates it has 40 million potential young consumers, is one of the few companies to have addressed the affordability criteria with its Rs 50 (US$1.1) and Rs 100 ($2.2) charge cards.
About half of India's 1 billion people are under the age of 25; it is reckoned that they have about $5 billion to spend. Add to that a slightly larger amount that doting parents will lavish on them. Which company will walk past a $10.5 billion cash pile without trying to dip in?????
But even as marketers like Levi's, Airtel, and scores of other Indian and foreign brands are rejoicing over the new mall rats, not everyone is happy. According to a recent study on the growing popularity of shopping malls conducted by the television channel CNBC, traditional shopping districts are loosing out on customers. "It is the soaring heat that makes people head for malls," said one store owner in a traditional shopping district in Kolkata.
However, while traditional shopping districts begrudge the loss of customers to the more upmarket malls, shopping mall executives and mall store owners also say that increasing footfalls do not quite translate into proportionate increases in sales, although they "are not exactly plummeting" they say.
Nevertheless, mall owners aren't objecting to the extra crowds. "Yes it is true that footfalls are leaping up in shopping malls without translating into an equivalent increase in sales, but we cannot ignore them," says the marketing and public relations officer of the Bengal Ambuja Metro Development, that has just developed one of the country's largest shopping malls in Kolkata. "It translates into brand recall value and publicity for us."
Malls being the visible face of the dramatic change in retailing that’s going on in India, the incumbents like Pantaloons (which also owns Big Bazaar ? seen as India’s Wal-Mart) to heavyweights like Reliance which is planning a big entry into the retail sector in India, selling in India will no longer be the same. For customers that means good news ? in the form of choice and discounts. For retailers, it means that they need to get to scale rapidly.
About 65 percent of the population is younger than 35, the right age for the mall experience, and designated as a powerful consumer force, having grown up without the shortages and self-denial that older generations lived through. Just 22 million Indians are credit-card users, but the number is expected to triple in the coming years.
"In a way the mall experience is not new to the Indian psyche,". "Like Europe, India always had a lot of village fairs; Indians like one-stop shopping."In a mall, you have entertainment, you have food, you have product retail - a very similar experience to a mela, an Indian fair. We see the phenomenon as set to grow dramatically," .
Along with malls, there is another? M-word which is changing India.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
India is the flavour of the day. But we need to make it more than that. India needs a few decades of sustained development to make up for all the lost time. We have the world’s youngest population. If we are not to disappoint and lose this generation, we need to work on building the India of tomorrow. We may not be easily able to change our politicians and policies, but I firmly believe that we can use our innovation and entrepreneurial abilities to bring about change. We have to do this not between two generation, but between two elections. The India Rising story needs to not become a chapter but a book.