How To Know Someone?

Peep inside their fridge

If you have ever built a business that serves directly to consumers, you will know how hard it is to segment the audience based on their demographic and economic status. Researchers use a socio-economic grid to classify the target audience. The grid correlates one’s level of education to the number of items at their home (such as Television, Air conditioner, Internet, Electricity, Land etc).

The output of the grid reads like this — a highly educated person with the maximum number of items at their home would be segmented as most affluent, SEC A and least educated with bare essential durables as SEC E. With SEC B, C, D in between, we are expected to segment the whole of India. The logic allows most premium products to be marketed to SEC A followed B and the cheaper ones to SEC C, D, E.

But India isn’t that simple. Not even two neighbours behave in the same way; despite their similar education or affluence.

Rama Bijapurkar in her book We are Like That Only describes how there are many Indias in one. There are chances that a consumer from SEC C might use a L’oréal lipstick made for the premium market and the consumer from SEC A would bargain for a couple of bucks at the fruit vendor.

India needs layers. And hence the SEC grid, oftentimes, goes out of the window.

Here is when the refrigerator acts as a great proxy. Open the door and you know if a person (and their family) eats more vegetables and fruits, or dairy and meat. Stores a range jams or stays free of anything with too many preservatives. Eats brie and cheddar or makes do with Amul cheese. Cares about Coke or has a fresh jar of lemonade with mint leaves.

With this, you can unravel secrets around their health, taste, emotional priorities and effort around food and marry it to their overarching paying capacity. And what do we do with these secrets?

• If you are in the business that speaks directly to consumers, it’s a great way to garner insights on their personalities and match them to your offering
• If not, you can use this trick to know a little more about your friend, relative, or the date who brags about being healthy but has zero fruit and 30 kinds of butter sitting on the top shelf of their fridge.