Let me take you back into the 1980s. I’m talking mid eighties. My father was posted in Nigeria. We were allowed to visit him annually. These visits used to be quite a break for us for, in those days when #international #travel was restrictive and expensive, we used to get a chance to route our travel at least one way via Europe.
For a teenager in his final years in School, you can well imagine the excitement it was and also for our not too fortunate non travelling friends, who would lap up stories from those of us who got a chance to travel. Cameras weren’t very easily available and rolls of films, development etc. were expensive and we couldn’t go berserk with pictures etc. like we are used to today. And for the uninitiated- No there wasn’t any FB or Instagram, but trust me the fun was limitless. After all you could still choose smoking seats those days on the aircraft, so even transcontinental flights didn’t appear that long at all. Music too was so much better in the eighties, and we all could afford #Sony Walkmans. Yes, Sweet dreams were made of these!
The final destination was an underdeveloped (in those days), thickly forested area called #Ajaokuta, where a Steel plant was coming up. The traffic rules were clear- Snakes first, humans later! Our high points during the stay were visits to the “Jhopdi Market”, which literally sold everything under the sun and the regular “Landings”, meaning landing at peoples homes with some food and partying, and the occasional visits to the fish markets to buy amazingly fresh and huge fishes especially a huge hit with the Bong expats. Good careless life for 2 months, enjoying mingling with the locals and their way of life. Local kids in their teens were enterprising and learned to earn their own money, while we still depended on pocket monies.
“Jhopdi” by the way means a Shack with non permanent roofing, in Hindi. Just catching a Coke and buying quirky things were great experiences and especially bargaining with the local and getting the prices that we considered right. That could be even 1/4th of what was initially quoted. I had two local friends that I liked hanging out with, Azubuike and Augustine, and we’d play table tennis together often. Azubuike’s parents were of humble origins compared to Augustine’s whose father was the GM of the Steel plant. Interestingly, that never came in the way of how they dealt with each other and both the kids worked for earning their own money- doing odd jobs etc.
The Jhopdi market shop owners referred to us Indians as Ebo Pepes and wouldn’t tell us what that meant and every time I would ask my friends, they’d just smile politely and not say a word. Eventually after many table tennis games together one day, I insisted on knowing the meaning. So Azubuike told me very apologetically, “ Ebo means a white foreigner who is extremely fair skinned and Pepe is red pepper, so if you mix the two colors, you kinda get the Indian shade of skin color! But it is not a racial thing, really!” I was fairly amused and laughed it away.
Many years later in #Ranchi, the #SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited) Satellite township was developed next to Shyamali- #Mecon’s residential Colony, and a lot of new people came from various parts of India to work in SAIL. These were people from all the states and they had a neighbourhood market where they were shopping for vegetables and daily needs etc.
Needless to say that the market wasn’t as exotic as the Jhopdi Market, but it had to work for the “Demchi”, as the new comers were referred to by the shop keepers. I grew up in Ranchi and know the local lingo and most of the dialects spoken around and even I could not fathom what that meant. So I asked a few of the shopkeepers who didn’t have the faintest clue where the word came from or what it meant, but one said that it is these guys who keep saying the word- the new comers to the area. And then in a moment of epiphany I understood - The New Comers used to find the local merchandise cheap in money terms and when they’d ask for the prices of vegetables etc., they’d be pleasantly surprised and would utter almost involuntarily, “Damn Cheap” and the locals who weren’t very conversant with English took the word to be #Demchi and hence all these new comers were christened as “Demchis”.
Both the Ebo Pepes and Demchis had their styles of buying- one category bargaining for deals and quirky stuff and the other not bargaining at all and some times even paying over the price asked by the seller. So rather than being slurs these were segments that were naturally identified and christened based on the consumer buying behaviour, by the shop keepers, across continents.
So identifying and addressing the needs of the #Consumer segments seemed pretty easy and came naturally even to the less educated shop keepers.
And here, we pay a fortune in our MBA schools to learn #Market #Segmentation, which is #Demchi to learn in real life, provided you pay attention.
However, You still can’t usually create segments, you can identify, address and own them though.
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