Indian consumers are rapidly falling in line with their Western counterparts. They have over the last decade or so, moved from following a culture of savings to an obsession for spending. Although part of the credit goes to the liberalization undertaken by the government during the early 1990s, much of it is also because of the rapidly changing values and lifestyle of the urban Indian, the so called ‘Middle Class’. This feature aims at understanding these 21st century urban Indian consumers in a retail setting.

This feature is an effort towards demystifying the buying behavior of the urban Indian consumers so that marketers (retailers and mall managers in particular) can allocate the scare resources at their disposal in a more effective and efficient manner.

Though the study was conducted in Mumbai, given the demographic and psychographic similarity of Indian consumers, baring regional peculiarities, across all major metros and towns in India, the findings and interpretations of the study hold fairly objective and directional value. After going through the secondary literature and data available, websites relating to retail industry and other sources, we narrowed in on a few beliefs (myths) held by retailers and media in general. These beliefs in turn dictate their strategies and tactics to take their business forward.

A two-page questionnaire was prepared, to conduct a detailed survey amongst these retail consumers. The survey was done at their respective residences or offices and not during their visits to the store.The data collected was then fed into SPSS software and using basic statistical analysis like frequency distribution, cross-tabulation, etc. some observations and interpretations were made, which are listed below.

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