25 years of Liberalization. Surely that is worthy of a celebration. Or at least a special sale. Or a coupon. Or something. I graduated in 1992, and most of my batch considered migration. Away from a country where you had to wait years to buy a car, get a telephone or a gas connection. And that too if you were amongst the miniscule number of people able to afford it. Where life expectancy was 59 years. Essentially you scrounged all through your working life, tried to give your kids the best possible education, bought a house just before you retired at 58, and died shortly after. Now, thanks to all the good stuff that happened with Liberalization you can expect to live to 70 in the one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Not just that – many of you, dear reader, are wealthy in global terms. Check out where you stand with this global income calculator.But enough with the nostalgic we’ve come a long way trip. What if you were born after 1991? If you were a LibKid? Wouldn’t you behave differently because you hadn’t experienced scarcity, homogenity, mediocrity, insecurity on a national scale? In 1992 many entering white collar jobs were expected to support their parents financially. Today, that proportion would be far less. Home ownership is on the rise, above 80% in more prosperous states. Prices of ‘must-have’ consumer items like vehicles, televisions, clothes, phones, appliances, furniture have dropped to become accessible to many more. So LibKids are in a position to take greater risks, and spend more. Having been brought up in a consumerist society and less exposed to delayed gratification and scarcity, LibKids are more likely to be impatient to acquire material wealth and its symbols, and more vocal about their rights as consumers. More likely to hop jobs and be entrepreneurs as they have the financial safety net to do so. I really think that just as the US has categorizations such as Millennials and Baby Boomers, India should have its own – starting with LibKids. As a cohort they would definitely behave differently from Midnight’s Children born in the years just after Independence.
We’ve lately been doing a series of programs, most recently a webinar, which broadly discuss personalization and individualization of marketing which is what got me thinking about this. Today we’re co-hosting a session with netCore on “Massively Scalable Marketing for One” at Dusit Devarana in Delhi. I’m sure we’re going to have a very interesting discussion across the table on this one. Next week will see us do another webinar on 28th June, register here to participate.
As always, happy to hear your thoughts!
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