The New Indian Consumers

Target customers of global multinational instantly changed towards India as soon as India opened
its economy in 1990s. These MNCs were targeting middleclass groups-200 million people. To
target these came huge social, economic and political barriers. Things have changed in recent
years. People are shifting towards consumerism. India’s demographic profile shows mostly Young
people under the age of 20. To examine the changes in attitudes, Galup organization conducted
surveys of respondents to know about hopes, hopes, plans and evolution of Indian consumers.
They came up with 3 insights:

Indians are getting more realistic: Indians are often thought of as stereotyped spiritual people
who rejected materialistic values. The data opposed this fact. Almost half of the urban population
adopted “work hard and get rich” culture by 1996. Indians are highly motivated and they wanted
material success. They put in hours to achieve their goals. And it is ranked among the top hard
working nations in the world.

Consumerism is becoming a way of life in India: Indians’ saving goals underscores the increase
in materialism. Although long term goals were a high priority but life’s pleasure here and now has
recently gained importance. People are heavily spending money on electronics and other durable
goods rather saving for their children’s education. Travel and entertainment also were popular
among Indian consumers. This trend reflected on all age demographics. In each segment a majority
of new and potential customers are entering the market for the first time. This shows the market is
expanding and there is huge source of potential for earning revenue for multinational companies.
Although income is raising but middle and low income individuals are not satisfied with their
earnings. In short term income constraints and rising cost may become barriers for low income
individual. But as they are materialistic their efforts to make money eventually fuel consumerism
in the long run.

Foreign is passé; Indian is paramount: Indians used to believe foreign goods had overall
supremacy in quality goods. But things have changed now with Indians succeeding in global
economic stage; “Made in India” concept became highly influencing factors for Indian customers.
Their trust in domestic companies has grown exponentially. Indians realized that foreign goods
are not customized to suit their needs. They want products that are made in India and for Indians.
Foreign companies were able to establish in India only because they customized according to
Indian needs. Seven of the top MNC came up joint venture to take advantage of both customized
products for Indians as well as quality and technology association with international companies.
Example- Hero Honda.

India is a diverse country with 23 official languages and more than 1000 dialects. Trying to connect
with all the consumers is a difficult task. It has wrapped modernity around its traditional core. The
harmonious coexistence of seeming contradictions is one of the most confusing aspect of Indian
Psyche- but it also tells that country is open for change. It has the ability to add new dimensions
without losing old ones. The companies understand that this complexity will help selling to Indians
and get most benefits of scale.

Summary: Dual Process Theories of Higher Cognition

Dual process and dual system theories in both cognitive and social psychology have been subjected
to a number of criticisms. There are 5 major themes leading critiques of dual process and dual
system theories:

 Criticism 1: Dual process theorists have offered multiple and vague definitions.
 Criticism 2: Proposed attribute clusters are not reliably aligned. The most persistent fallacy
in the perception of dual process theories is the idea that Type 1 processes are responsible
for all bad thinking and that Type 2 processes necessarily lead to correct responses
 Criticism 3: There is a continuum of processing styles, not discrete types. The implications
by some critics that the mere demonstration of processing continua in some contexts
undermines dual process models are not correct.
 Criticism 4: Single process accounts may be offered for dual process phenomena.
 Criticism 5: Evidence for dual processing is ambiguous or unconvincing. The critics of
dual process theories believed that the evidence for dual processes is weak or ambiguous,
 that it can be explained away by single process theory accounts that do not implicate
qualitatively distinct types of mental processing.

Having examined the five major lines of criticism, we recognize that there are a number of
problems with the proliferation of dual processing theories of higher cognitive processes. Many of
the criticisms have force for a number of theories. We can infer that the better defined theories do
predict particular strong correlations but only under specified conditions. These theories also
predict the conditions under which such associations will not be observed and the evidence
concurs.

The Defining Features of Type 1 and 2 Processing

The defining characteristics of Type 1 process is their autonomy. The execution of Type 1 process
is mandatory when their triggering stimuli are encountered and they are not dependent on input
from high level control systems. Type 1 processing has some heterogeneity- encompassing both
innately specified processing modules or procedures and experimental associations that have been
learned to the point of automaticity.

It is believed that reasoning and decision making sometimes require both:

 An override of the default intuition.

 Its replacement by effective Type 2 reflective reasoning.

Thus, the view is that the defining features of Type 1 processing and of Type 2 processing are not
the conjunction of eight different binary properties. Autonomous processing is the defining feature
of the Type 1 processing. There is evidence that the key feature of Type 2 processing is the ability
to sustain the decoupling of secondary representations- a key feature of all memory tasks. The
latter is a foundational cognitive requirement for hypothetical thinking. The development of dual
processing theories is an evolving project. It is a complex and demanding effort and the critic
appraisals by those both sympathetic and unsympathetic to the enterprise provide an important
stimulus to this process.