Shopping habits are changing ?

I was wondering if our shopping habits have changed ? Especially in the context of grocery buying....

If today you were to ask a typical married male the prices of various grocery products my guess is that he would be able to give more accurate answers than a similar profiled person a generation back.

The reasons would be the fact that as many of us shift to buying from organized retail, grocery buying which used to be in the exclusive domain of the lady of the house has also shifted and now has become a sort of joint family activity

This has implication for marketers as till now for many categories communication has been targeted at the house wife, but when the buying habit shifts should the focus of communication also shift??

Credit Card usage in India

Read an interesting bit of news that use of credit cards is going down, and that of debit card increasing link

People belonging to a generation before were strictly against debt, the saying "keep your legs within the blanket" which meant that live within your means was what they believed in... But the younger generation , was thought to be the one which did not seem to care much about swiping the card and making purchases. Spend today and pay later was seemed to the order of the day..

But the data from RBI, shows a different picture, consumers not using their credit cards and moving on to debit card use. Is it just a blip and consumers would again switch back to their credit cards is something which needs to be seen, but maybe the consumer is also getting smarter in realizing the high interest rated being charged....

Link to my article in Economic times on Managing Customer Expectations

Sharing the link to my article in Economic times on Exceeding Customer Expectations, Link