Learnings from ethnography study:
What were your key insights about the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’?
We had some very interesting insight about these people
The “golden” savings (religious Beliefs)-I realised that financial assets and their ownership varies considerably within this section vis- a-vis the normal middle class. The awareness about the financial instruments available for investment/savings is very less. Because the majority of residents are Muslims, they do not invest or save in banks as Islam prohibits earning any kind of interest on the money. This limits the financial instruments available to this community. Due to this, entire savings were converted to gold from a nearby shop, which was doing very good despite being in such a locality
Consumption patterns-These people prefer a meal based purchase as opposed to stocking items barring only a few commodities such as sugar etc. As a result, we found a lot of INR 2-3 packets having all the spices needed for a meal. On analysis we also found that since most of the women also work in this area, they having no time to cook food for their families and invariably buy these sachets for their family usage
Importance of religious heads and sanitation-In Muslim societies major influencers are the religious heads called Imams. These exert a big influence on their followers-the community. This is pretty evident when we talk to people about different things such as sanitation, their inadvertent reply starts with “Imaam sahib ne yeh kaha tha “. Especially in a Muslim dominated society “WUDU” plays a major part in ensuring hygiene and cleanliness for the society
Oral care and Ramadan-Oral care sales in such regions falls heavily especially in Ramadan as muslims don’t taste eat or drink anything during this month. This translates to low sales within this month. I understood that all these trends are necessary for a marketer to be able to understand the marketing strategy
Occupations- Primary business involved self-employment in grocery shops, fish sellers, vegetable sellers, cigarette shops, sweets and snacks shops, automobile garages etc. can be observed.
