It's party time. Time to buy Gift.

Greetings,

Let me ask you a simple question. How many parties have you attended in last 1 month? How many gifts have you given or received in recent months?

Our culture has evolved in recent years. If we call our culture a party culture now, I won't be too wrong. We always keep our eyes and ears open to identify a cause for party, find a reason to buy a gift. I envy the owners of Archies, Hanung (btw, have you sen Hanung scrip touching new highs?) etc. Maybe, it's our feeble attempt to find bit of happiness, although fake, in today's stressful times.

Even in late 90s, in *higher middle class families* if I may use this word, celebrating a birthday used to mean visitng gurudwara, going to school wearing anything but uniform with a pack of toffees given by mother. Bit more fancied families used to have some party with pastries, pakoras, rasna etc and probably take some pics using their Yashica or Kodak camera.

Now, even families with low incomes will celebrate the birthday like a wedding. Cards will be printed, invitations will be sent, return gifts will be bought. Either a caterer is arranged or party will arranged at McDonald, Papa John's or any lovely restaurant in the city but not home. If the family doesn't have a camcorder, a video guy will also be arranged.
For next few days, same video will be posted on YouTube, pics will be put on Flickr. Do you wish to add some more???

There are more days to celebrate and give/take gifts. Na na..I am not saying that population has increased and we have birthdays and anniversary days. Society and business have come together to find more days like Father's Day, Mother's day, Brother's Day, Sister's Day, Mother-in-law's day, teacher's day, engineer's day..the list is endless. If you are arduous enough to amke the list, you will find that the annual calendar falls short to accommodate all these days.


Ain't this blog writer wasting time writing this scrap? Go man, have a party but before that buy a gift!!
~ Navjot Singh Sohanpal

Shopping Trends in Today's India

Festival Greetings,

It's the festival season in India and Divali is on Nov 9. The papers are full of advertisments, markets are full of hoardings, SALE banners are seen everywhere. Every company wishes to see their profit / revenue charts going up for this month expecting higher sales. I also went to the market hoping the surge in number of visitors but I don't think I found anything special. Every weekend, the market is as much flooded as I saw this weekend.

I observe this as just one of the indicators of the changing lifestyle of our society. Earlier, people used to wait for Divali to buy the car, music system, TV, some gold or whatever. Now, people don't wait for this festival season to go out with their shopping lists. In my opinion, there are many reasons for this change.

+ First and foremost, many companies run their SALEs almost entire year. See Koutons for example.
+ Second, companies have stopped giving huge cash discounts as we had witnessed earlier. Now, the offers are more like "Buy 1, Get 1 free. ", "But X, Get Y free", "But X, Get N% on Y". The intent is to clear the inventory.
+ Third, I think companies also don't wish to focus their sales over one month; but they would like proportionate sales across the year. I read the similar remarks by a Samsung official as well.
+ Lastly, a view from the buyer's side and not seller's. Today's buyer don't plan their wish list like our parents used to do. They just see the ad, or see the same at somebody's place and intend to have it in their home the next day.

People would buy a thing when they want and not just wait for the festival season to come.
~ Navjot Singh Sohanpal

Consumerism in India

In India, times have really changed and I am no brainer to judge whether it is for good or bad. The west has already witnessed this starting early 90's till date and now people in US are already talking about low consumer spending and few even use the word "recession". India is witnessing a new wave of consumerism. During last 2-3 years, everyone in India must have witnessed the sudden surge in the number of the malls, factory outlets, number of brands, number of advertisements promoting those brands and more importantly number of people visiting those malls and buying those brands.

Till mid 90s, I don't think the youth were too excited by brands. Many were not even aware of the brands. I, for one, was quite happy when my mother bought me pair of NewPort jeans. I don't know what that brand was but I was happy to have a pair of jeans. In late 90s, i think youth started fancied about clothes. With the start of this century, I think most were conscious about brands. Lee, Levis, UCB, Freelook etc. become the fancied brands. Now, youth wanted a pair of lee jeans and not just jeans.

Similarly, everybody wanted to put latest electronics, 21 in tv is not good enough anymore, people want 29 in flat and that too plasma. Everyone wants iPod, laptop and not just desktops. People, even the 50+ years old, fancy flashing the latest Nokia N-series phone even though all they would use it for is phone calls and maybe SMSing. Everyone will eat out at least a week. Could you fancy eating out once a week even in late 90s? Everyone will go out for a movie paying 150 bucks per person and they will also buy popcorn which comes for 50+ Rs in cinemas but available outside for 10 Rs. There are similar observations you can easily make in our changing times.

So many questions come to my mind. Are people earning those many bucks to spend freely? Is it money that has become cheaper or people perspire less while earning that money or mindset has changed from "save money for old age and children" to "enjoy your life"? There are many more questions like these. I know for sure everyone would have their own answers to these questions.

Life is full of questions, the journey to death is all about finding answers to those questions.

~ Navjot Singh Sohanpal