The joys of home delivery

A large part of our daily life goes in running errands - shopping for groceries, giving clothes to the ground-floor ironing man and waiting for it to come back, following up with the domestic help, fixing the water tank, the torn mesh net, and the faulty electric switch. For a woman, the list goes slightly longer, to include regular trips to the beauty parlour to monitor hair growth in the body, cracks in the feet, and uneven growth of hand nails. This, and that, and all of this, take up a lot of time, eventually cutting down the time you can spend doing nothing, or doing something you like (which could be eating out with friends, or watching a movie). For more and more people living in neutral families, and more single working population, who are "servant-less" (as Julia Child coined the word) or without a live-in domestic help, this seems like everyone's life. And I forgot to mention the plight of those who have working Saturdays, leaving only a meagerly Sunday to wrap up household errands.

Grocery shopping in India is traditionally done on weekends from local bazaars. Fresh fruits and fresh meat are bought once a week, if not more often. Local thela-walas also come knocking on doors to sell fresh sabji  in the morning. If you are a home-maker, or have an elderly retired person in the house, this would be the ideal way to pick up fresh produce for a cooking. However, with the paucity of time, and families becoming more nuclear, spending so much time, every weekend, to follow this procedure becomes a bit cumbersome and often tiring. 

And then came the shopping malls in India, with chains like Big Bazaar. Of course, there have been some already existing chains like Niligiris super-markets which have been there successfully for a much longer time, but these are mostly more localized super markets, only present in certain cities. Kishore Biyani slowly transformed the shopping habits of lower and middle class by giving more value for money. Along with this, his intelligent use of "organized chaos" meant that he meant the transition from local sabji mandi to an air-conditioned, but non-intimidating shopping mall very comfortable for an average Indian homemaker.  In his book, "It happened in India", he acknowledged using clever tricks like opting for a lower open entrance as opposed to a more intimidating jazzy glass entrance, adopting more local themed advertising, and using a more "bum touching another bum" sort of a crowd sabji mandi feel, hiring salesmen and saleswomen less smarter than the average consumer, etc. All this worked very well for Big Bazar. 

But, that doesn't mean that Big Bazar became a profitable organization. It didn't. Biyani's Future Group had a highly leverage balance sheet, to the extent that he had to sell off his flagship Pantaloons chain to the Aditya Birla Group a couple of months back. Anyone who is conversant with the retail industry would tell that it is an expensive and long term proposition, investing in retail requires immense patience in a market like India. Sourcing and supply chain constraints make it difficult for such chains to be profitable in a short period of time. 

There is of course one aspect that everyone talks about - how Indian consumers are value oriented. Rama Bijapurkar in her book "We are like this only" made a strong point that price is not the only factor that determines what an Indian consumer would buy. Rather, the Indian consumer would seek more value in a product. True it is, and I do not contest this understanding. But is value the only factor that determines consumer behaviour ? Does one also not need to look at "convenience" as a factor ?

Big shopping malls have played the "convenience card" for a long time. Under one roof you get everything. It is faster, more convenient, as they claim, saving time. The online retail shopping portal bigbasket.com runs advertisement of how everyone in Bangalore seems to be hoarding movie theatres suddenly, apparently because they all shop at bigbasket.com, which saves them all the time they would have spent had they gone grocery shopping. Walmart and Tesco, when they enter India, would sell the convenience card as well, offering the biggest shopping extravaganza under one roof. Would it work ? 

From my own shopping experience, what the "convenience" argument does not take into account is that stepping into a big shopping mall (like Big Bazar) still takes time. Even if shopping is faster, billing isn't not. There are long queues, that take on a weekday, anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes, to wrap up billing. Daniel Kahnman in his seminal work says that the memory that you have is not how the experience was, but the experience ends. So, a brilliant concert that ended with a technical glitch in the last ten minutes, with noise problems, will only last in our memories as a bad concert, since all we will take out of the concert hall is the bad memory of the noise glitch in the last few minutes. If this were true, long billing time would be the lasting memory one would take out, often negating the satisfying experience of how good the values were and how convenient it was to find brocoli, zuchchini and gobi and tinda all under the same roof. It is also more likely to  have a longer lasting of the process being a lot longer than it really was. If I were a homemaker, I wouldn't mind it as much, but I am a working woman, would I still not mind it ?

Does this mean that online retail chains like bigbasket.com would be a success ? While the whole process of grocery list making can be done in 10 minutes, the slot for delivery is a span of 3 hours, which means, you still have to hang around at home for those three long hours to get the delivery. 

This kept me thinking that perhaps the only way out from this would be to have a system where one can get the grocery delivered to me at my door-step even when I am not at home, when I do not have to be at home to pick it up. This could be done if we had sort of a letter box, albeit a much bigger one, outside the house, which would, say, have a number lock which you share with the vendor. A more advanced version of it might even have refrigeration ones. This would mean that grocery can come a couple of hours before I am home, and I can pick it up whenever I am home, without having to wait at home. A product like this can be made frugally, and can be of immense use. This would also be helpful if grocery shops send fresh cut and chopped vegetables and marinated meat a couple of hours before you can reach home. All you need to do is to take it out and cook. Like I mentioned earlier, our fresh food eating culture will not shift to canned food like the Americans are used to. Rather, we will continue eating fresh cooked food, only cutting down the preparation time. Cooking time, as we know, is a prolonged process for ordinary food. What is a more cumbersome process is the preparation time, chopping, defrosting and marinating. These are also more physically exhaustive process than just putting something on low flame on an oven. 

In effect, what I am saying, in addition to keeping a refrigerator inside your kitchen, keep a refrigerator outside for the grocery to be filled up at your convenience. What is the risk of it being stolen (assuming the product would have something to fix it to the wall) - you lose some onions, carrot, and may be a small refrigerator, which is a lot less expensive than losing a car, which is also kept outside and not stolen that easily ! This is in line with my earlier post where I had suggested keeping the kitchen door open from outside and detached from the main door, to ensure that the domestic help can come anytime without you to be in the house to open and guard the house. 

This would help smaller mom and pop shops which can deliver fresh grocery at any time. Bigger malls can also benefit, because it would substantially decrease the consumer load on weekends. Bigger malls could also cut down on cost by making expansive, expensive spread out malls and shift to smaller super market models with local delivery options. This would also help online retailers who can now have delivery options spread out all through the week, as opposed to prime slots on weekends. Home delivery option at ease will also help home-makers who limit their extensive weekend and monthly shopping to weekends, when they can have a mode of conveyance, like a car, back home or a help from another family member to have all the stuff carried back home. If that didn't have to happen, shopping can be done on comparatively less crowded slots.  

This home delivery system can exist with the existing mom and pop shops, online retail and other players like a super markets. While going to a grocery shop still doesn't go out of fashion, with the consumers still feeling the need to touch and feel the grocery before buying like it is done in local shops, it can become a monthly affair when one goes to shop for monthly provisions like wheat, dal, atta for the whole week. The remaining re-fills can be done from a trusted shop which one frequents through refills by way of home delivery. 

To redeem or not to redeem (points) ?

Women love to shop. We all know that, don't we ?

It wouldn't be surprising that the universally accepted trick to a good business is somehow to get women to the shopping floor and let them shop to their heart's content. 

When I was young, sales happened at specific times each year. In Calcutta, there was the famous "Chaitra sale" which was the inventory clearing sale at the end of the Bengali year (or the last month of the Hindu calendar). Those days are gone now - sales happen all the time. There's spring sale, summer sale, autumn sale, end of season sale. You name it and there's a sale !

Robert D Cialdini, in his seminal book "Influence: The Art of Persuasion" explains why sales and discounts work well. He writes that most of our actions automatic. We do not think through most of our actions, which trigger the same recurring reactions. For example, someone asks you permission to jump the queue, you refuse. However, if the same person says " Excuse me Sir could I please buy the train ticket before you because I have to rush to the hospital to see my mother", you would oblige. You would oblige not because the reason is very valid, but simply because there is a reason ( as you use the word "because"), you are used to thinking there would be a reason, which is good enough. So if you say, "Excuse me, Sir, may I jump the queue because I have an appointment at the parlour or I have to go to a movie", it might still work.

I will quote an excerpt from Cialdini below to explain this better : 

"This parallel form of human automatic action is aptly demonstrated in an experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer. A wellknown principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do. Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: Excuse me, I have five pages. May
I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush? The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: Ninety-four percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine? Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those asked complied. At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional information provided by the words “because I’m in a rush.” But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference. Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word “because” and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no
new information, was added to justify their compliance. Just as the“cheep-cheep” sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from maternal turkeys—even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat—so, too, did the word “because” trigger an automatic compliance response from Langer’s subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to comply. Click, whirr!"

Cialdini goes on to explain that price discounts and sales work well because they fall into this "automatic human action" category. "Oh there's a sale - it means I will get a good deal." So sales work well and retailers keep milking this idea, many times over. Sales and discounts have now become happy "nudge techniques" which are used by retailers all the time.

Last week, though, I discovered an innovative nudge technique which wasn't a sale.

It is innovative because I have not come across any thing like this before, and if you have, let me know.

So, I have a loyalty program with Allen Solly ( A.S for short). A.S sent me an sms last month that I have 148 points to redeem by the end of September. This seemed good enough reason to nudge me to go to the shop. As if that wasn't enough, I got another sms sometime in the last week of September, saying if I shopped within September, I get an extra 250 points to redeem.








This wasn't a sale, like we know it. When I landed up in the store, it wasn't crowded, which means it was not a bulk offer. And yet, it was such a strong "nudge".

I think it worked very well because :

(a) There was a feeling of exclusivity, since sales are often associated with crowds, excessive hastling and jostling at the trial rooms. Also, such exclusivity in a way gives way to a feeling of gratitude, which binds one to some sort of reciprocity. As Cialdini points out, "people generally feel obliged to return favours offered to them. This trait is embodied in all human cultures and is one of the human characteristics that allow us to live as a society.Compliance professionals often play on this trait by offering a small gift to potential customers. Studies have shown that even if the gift is unwanted, it will influence the recipient to reciprocate." (Wikipedia) This sense of being given a "special offer" which others equally placed were not, creates a sense of gratitude, so you almost feel that you must buy something. Of course, it works even well with the fact that you already have been given some discounts, which you have to redeem in any case.

(b)  It is also a time bound offer. With sales and discounts, you know if you miss this time, there's always next. With special offers like this, which are randomly offered, you do not know if it will be offered to you again, and if so when. So you would want to make the best use of it when it is there.  This element of uncertainty which makes letting this offer go a bit tougher than others.

This could bring in more people to the counters, and pump up the sales. However, it does have problems in the long run :

a) If everyone starts using it, it would look like a common trick and wouldn't appear to be all enticing. However, the "uncertainty factor" would still remain - so even if you know it is a common trick, you still wouldn't know when you get it again and hence, the force of "nudge" would still remain. Everyone knows that during sales, it is often the old stock that is sold, whereas this special offer comes during normal season sales, and one has access to new in-season collection at some discount. All this might still make the offer look lucrative.

b) It can only be used in places where the customers do not interact with each other often and there is no sense of unfairness or discontent amongst those who have not been offered. The selection has to be random and spread out.

c) Like I said, sales are inventory clearing exercises. But giving discounts during season means the profit margin for such discounted sales decrease. Unless the "nudge" is considerably strong to make the customer shop a lot more than the item of discount, this might be countered.


It will be interesting to see if this strategy catches up in the future. I will keep an eye on this. If you find out, let me know too.

Designs, phones and kitchens

Being trained as  a lawyer and not having any technical education, I have always been blissfully ignorant of design aesthetics in a product.

I always assumed that the beauty of a product ( gadgets mostly) would only be relevant from a technical point of view - you judge a television by how good the picture quality is, you judge a laptop by its configuration, and similar such things. To the rest, like me, design and aesthetics in a product always seemed synonymous - an iphone is beautifully designed, simply because it looks beautiful ( why wouldn't it - it has everything that a pretty gadget needs). The house that overlooks the cafeteria in my office is designed well, because it is white, majestic, has dreamy balconies, and a terrace garden, and hence, beautiful. In other words, design didn't really an independent meaning in my world-view other than inter-changeable relation to aesthetics.

All of this changed when I read Steve Job's wonderfully written biography by Walter Issacson. I am still someone with no technical education ( so I do not know the difference between an intel processor and a microchip or a frying fan), but the book made me realize that a product isn't merely its technical configuration. Or for that matter, a product isn't always gadget. Or, that design isn't only about aesthetics. There is a lot more to a product than I had perceived it to be for so long.

Design is, contrary to what I believed earlier, a far more holisitic and integral element which gives identity to a product. Also, equally important is that utility is also an important element of design. Of course, there is the debate that sometimes design is mutually exclusive from utility, but I would think that utility is an integral part of designs.

As it would happen, weeks after I finished reading Job's book, and was looking around the world, trying to segregate the world into binary categories of "good designs" and "bad designs",  I happened to watch a program on BBC on a design used by Samsung for user manuals. This design is created by a company called the "Design Vitamins" and looks like this :

Look how beautiful it is again :

As the excerpt on the Design Vitamins' site rightly says "good design is for everyone", it indeed is. A good design can convert a prosaic user manual to a handy, useful tool, more accessible to everyone. The irony of a good design is that you almost look at it say " Oh come on ! How could anyone not have discovered it before ? Doesn't it seem like the only obvious way of doing a user manual ?" A good design also makes the earlier commonly used design look all the more stupid and ugly in retrospect - imagine going back to the user manual which doesn't look like this ever after knowing such beautiful designs exist. What is essential perhaps in creating a good design is to understand what the product wants to achieve and what value it intends to provide to its user. A user manual is of no use, if the user does not like to use it. Univerally, X is of no use, if the user of X doesn't like X.

With this, I began to again distill the world with the design-locator radar and looked at how flats are designed.  By way of a hypothesis, I asked myself what could be a well designed flat for an urban crowd that is predominantly double income nuclear family. The woman in this family works, she has long hours at office and often un-predictable work hours as most private sector jobs are. While her husband is helpful, he doesn't cook. They have a cook who comes daily. Like most Indian families, they do not like eating packaged food, and would prefer fresh cooked food, made twice daily. Waiting for the cooking lady in the morning means that she has to co-ordianate her gym timings with her, or miss out on yoga classes. It is even more problematic in the evening, when either of them has to rush home to open the door for the cook, or just end up missing the cook's timings and re-heating the food. She isn't comfortable giving the keys to the cooking maid for the whole house.

Would it not make sense if the kitchen had a separate entrance in most flats ? It would mean that the kitchen is secluded from the rest of the house, and the key can be given to the cook easily without being giving access to the whole house. It also means more flexible in and out time for residents in the house.

More and more women are going to work in the coming decades, and cooking, being a traditionally done by women, will continue to remain a difficult thing to manage. However, with the rich culture of home cooking habits that we have inherited from our mothers and grand-mothers, it is not very likely that we will shift to the American culture of packaged food. The food habits will therefore, continue to be fresh cooked food, but mostly done by cooking helps, and not the women in the family. All of this would probably work very well, if flats and houses had an extra door to the kitchen. It would mean that you didn't have to co-ordinate your day with the kaamwali bai's timings and still have fresh cooked food when you are back home - all of this comes at no extra cost , but just an extra door.

I would think it adds more utility to the house, and is better design. What do you think ?

I will write more on more design-efficient products as I locate more.