The Economic Times
12 April 2007
Its Time Marketers Explore Community-Specific Consumer Segments
Commercialization of religion must end
by S Irfan Habib
Scientist
NISTADS
New Delhi
Why should marketers explore community specific consumer segments now? As a matter of fact, a large number of Indian and transnational companies have done that already and this intervention has commercialized our cultural, social and religious lives. Than what do we mean by community in India?
As America seems to be the model in most of the market strategies, I must point out that American idea of a community is different from us in India. America is a huge diaspora where diverse races and communities form a single nation. Fresh communities are added changing the demographic profile of the American nation. Close to 18% US population today is Hispanic, with a growing purchasing power. A large number of marketing groups are rightly targeting this community. Comprising several unique and diverse consumer segments, the Hispanic Cohorts offers marketers the ability to understand the demographics, lifestyles, attitudes and behavioral characteristics of America’s largest, and fastest growing ethnic market. In India, however, the notion of a community is mostly around religion or region. Quite a few of our marginal Hindu festivals have been put on centre stage through the community specific marketing of several products. In a country like India, with serious economic and social disparities and heterogeneities, such unashamed commercialization has created social tensions, particularly in urban India. Why should a commercial product appeal to someone’s communitarian identity? We have designer T-Shirts with Om, Allah, and pictures of Gods and Goddesses in the market and now ring tones like Gayatri mantra for Hindus and Azaan for Muslims. One of the major MNCs launched a soap called Ganga with a claim that the soap had few drops of sacred Gangajal, obviously targeting the Hindu community in north India.
Besides profit and business, I see the need for community related marketing as part of the identity crisis in the globalized world. Even science and knowledge have not been spared from this essentialism and we have serious advocates for Islamic science and Hindu science, who tend to see their science as different from modern science. Islamic science in particular emphasizes its distinctive character, with Quran as its sole inspiration. I see all such attempts as divisive, particularly in a plural society like India.
Thus, I must say, I have a serious ethical problem with community specific marketing. Indian society, which is already fissured socially and regionally, should not be exposed to the neo-liberal market logic that revolves around profit at all cost. I do not advocate a return to the license raj but globalization does not mean unabashed aping of American consumerism. I say American here and not Western because I have often observed and shared a European’s discomfort with an American’s infinite appetite to consume
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