Retail Consumption: Small town Consumers & Metro city consumers, what's common, what's not

• Dissatisfaction with life stage and style, seeking variety in life, emotions, adjusting and living within norms, wanting the best at the least price, wanting to earn more, and the importance of reference groups are common among the two consumer sets.
• Small town people are more patient than metro denizens
• Brand Loyalty (particularly for older brands) is much higher in small towns.
• Small town people consider their diet to be healthy, while metro populace is calorie conscious.
• Small town people sport the 'Hum kisie se kum nahin' attitude, thereby moving into the zone of power from the zone of conformity. Movies like 'Bunty aur Babli' stand proof to this thirst.
• Content that strikes a chord transcends boundaries. So, news such as Rakhi Sawant slapping someone will be watched by everyone.
• Quality is not restricted to the four metros. People in small towns are very brand conscious too.
• The top 16 cities (12.3 million households) of India have 2.9 million Post Graduates (PG) as compared to 2.4 million PGs in the four metros (10.3 million households)
• The 16 cities score over the four metros in ownership of motor cycles (9.6 million as compared to 6.3 million), mopeds (2.9 and 1 million respectively), and scooters (5.6 and 3.6 million respectively).
• The largest bill ever printed by Big Bazaar was 72 feet - in a small town called Sangli, in Maharashtra.
• The monthly tune-ins in television the Hindi business news space on television has grown from a mere 1 crore, in January 2005, to 3.2 crore.
• More than 94 percent of the population in India in 1985 had an annual income of less than 90,000. In 2005, more than 54 percent of the population had an annual income of more than that.

Source : Panel Discussion- 'Are smaller town consumers really different?'; 'Balancing ROI- Metro Quality vs. Smaller town quantity'; Brand Reporter