MYTH The small town customer is a clone of a big city one REALITY: Media habits are different in small towns and so are shopping habits

MYTH Small town customers cannot appreciate sophisticated ads REALITY: Small town consumers need more convincing. Over simplification of ads doesn't help. And even vern has its limits

Is the consumer in small town India any different from her big city brethren? Well, yes and no. And in between this yes and no, a thousand marketing myths abound.

For instance, though the socio-cultural-economic realities of a small town do make for some peculiar consumption quirks, such as a preference for small-packs in consumer staples such as tea, toothpaste and detergents, the average resident of a small town isn't really a small-pack consumer. "Low unit packs sell in these markets, not low prices. Consumers here are more brand conscious than their big city counterparts," says C.K. Ranganathan, Chairman & Managing Director, CavinKare.

And when it comes to aspirations for a better product, service, lifestyle or career, why should the small towner be any different from the big city dweller? Unfortunately, marketers who are yet to catch up with small town realities erroneously caricature the consumers there as extremely price-driven, brand-fickle, and ill-informed; and often as semi-educated buffoons in awe of any advertising that uses vern taglines to convey over-simplified brand messages.

"The biggest mistake most marketers make is to assume that the small town consumer is merely a clone of the big city consumer," says Atul Sobti, Senior Vice President (Sales & Marketing), Hero Honda. And that the only difference between them is the money they have at their disposal. Nothing could be farther from truth.

MYTH Small town customers are credit shy REALITY: Don't blame the small-towners, blame the lack of organised credit

MYTH Young people in small towns are less informed than their big city brethern REALITY: You couldn't be more wrong. They are as well-informed as their big city counterparts

Take media habits, for instance. It is often taken for granted that people in small towns, with more time to spare because they spend less time commuting, watch more television compared to what people in Delhi or Mumbai do. Viewership data from television monitoring agency TAM for April-June 2004 in the Hindi-speaking markets reveal that individuals in a small town (1 lakh-10 lakh population) watch just 116 minutes of television per day compared to 131 minutes for a metro and 128 minutes for a city with a population in excess of a million. And fewer individuals watch mass entertainment channels, like Star Plus and Zee in smaller towns-a mere 47 per cent compared to 53 per cent in the metros.

Another commonly held misconception about the small town consumer is that she is the exact opposite of her urban counterpart. The notion that small town consumers necessarily go in for lower priced products has been a recipe for many a marketing disaster. In a study of affluent consumer across big metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad) and small metros (such as Patna, Coimbatore, and Vishakapatnam), research agency ACNielsen India found that small town consumers were in step, and very often a step-ahead, of consumers in metros.

More consumer households in small towns owned second homes (19 per cent compared to 13 per cent in the metros), laser discs (27 per cent to 22 percent), branded readymade garments (45 per cent to 42 per cent), and four-wheelers (92 per cent to 83 per cent). "Though for us (the FMCG marketers) the market has stagnated, durables that are aspirational have a huge market to tap in smaller, sub-million population towns because they have the money," says Geogi E. Zachariach, Head, Alembic Consumer Healthcare. What small town consumers are looking for is a good value proposition and not just low price. And new marketers such as LG or Samsung who do not have the mental baggage of such myths have grasped this, for they are not playing on price alone, and have succeeded in storming the Indian market, their latest success being in the smaller towns.

MYTH Small town customers do not have global aspirations REALITY: Even a cursory look at the sheer number of people migrating to foreign countries or big cities for education or employment shows otherwise

Among motorcycles, Hero Honda's Passion, coming at almost a Rs 2,000 premium to Splendor, has started to sell well in small town markets, points out Sobti as proof that style, aspirations and generally better quality (even at a higher price), has its takers even in the smaller towns. "And all this while it was more a problem of non-availability of organised finance, not credit shyness from consumers' viewpoint, because big players here would not finance beyond an area 10 km in radius," adds Sobti. Or they would have huge exclusion lists based on profession, for many big consumer financiers underestimated the small town consumers' capacity to repay simply because she was more often than not self-employed. Credit cards and home loans, two categories that have broken this myth, have seen their takings skyrocket from these towns, Rs 4,550-crore (spending) for credit cards (outside metros) and Rs 35,000-crore for home loans (outside top 20 cities).

But surely, the kids and teens in small towns must be less aware compared to Delhi or Mumbai youth? Wrong again, for viewership in metros and small towns mirror each other for awareness and attitude building vehicles such as news, sports, English movies and entertainment and kids channels, according to TAM figures for April-June 2004 for cable and satellite households. Sports channels were watched by 1 per cent of metro viewers, the same as small towns. Music channels by 3 per cent in metros as well as small towns. Even English entertainment channels such as Star World, Zee English, and AXN have an identical, 1 per cent share of viewership in the two categories.

MYTH Small town customers buy products in small sizes REALITY: Awareness that small packs are actually more expensive is much higher in small towns. Where they can afford it, small town consumers go in for big pack sizes

MYTH Small town customers are obsessed with price, price, and price REALITY: Consumers with equal amount of money in small towns buy more expensive products compared to big-city consumers

Similarly, there is a false assumption of a communication gap between the moderator (large-town marketer) and the respondent (small-town consumer) that is belied by the realities on the ground. "The biggest myth is to assume that small town is a different mass and that we need a Hindi or vern baseline for it," says Partha Sinha, Executive Vice President, Ambience Publicis. The fact is that a Hindi or vern baseline is needed as much for the big city as it is for the small city, for huge pockets within metros such as Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai exhibit population psychographics that have semi-urban, if not rural, characteristics.

"The small town consumer is more intelligent than most admit when it comes to comprehending ads. She is still not desensitised, unlike metro consumers," says Harish Bijoor, who runs an epnoymous marketing consultancy. While conducting a study for a foreign marketer entering the Rs 20,000-crore consumer durable industry, Bijoor Consults found that ephemeral product claims in advertising (such as the one where a television works wonders for your body) were literally scorned by the small town consumer. "One rule that works across big and small towns is simple and straightforward advertising," adds CavinKare's Ranganathan.

The legendary marketing guru Orvel Ray Wilson once said, "Customers buy for their reasons, not ours." Indian marketers would do themselves a service if they kept small-town 'reasons' in mind, much the way Electrolux Kelvinator kept the precarious power supply in small towns in mind when it launched its aptly named battery-powered refrigerator Bijlee, rather than being blindly guided by the old discredited myths about small towns.