The idea that the “younger generation” is from another planet is age-old, and no different from the notion that “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.”

However, there is certainly a fundamental cultural shift that is taking place at work that is a product of the social, political and economic changes of the last 20 years or so.

In India’s case, I call this Generation-C (C for Choice). The 20+ year olds or younger who are entering the workforce in India are ones who were born after the introduction of color television in India (1982), who have grown up with the explosion of media options, who have always seen multiple models of colorful cars running around on the roads. They’ve savored the fruits of liberalization during their childhood. Similar shifts were happening in China, having started a couple of years earlier — and Eastern Europe — and South Africa — and, of course, the US and Western Europe.

There is absolutely no doubt that these changes mean something to the attitude that this generation brings through the door, when they walk into work. Expectations of the young are always high; this generation’s seem even steeper.

Secondly – it sounds trite – technology has definitely had a significant impact in how truly fragmented we can be as an organization and yet be functional. Rigid attendance rules need apply no longer. Telecommuting is a reality, if not the norm.

However, however…these changes couldn’t happen without the previous generation@work loosening their shirt-collars and work-habits somewhat. That generation – the baby boomers and Gen-X in the case of the US, other labels in other countries – have challenged earlier norms, started the changes rolling, and Gen-Y is building on them.

“Plus c’est la meme chose, plus ça change.”

Two separate incidents recently reinforced to me the need to know and understand the customer intimately, and to have the ability to respond to that knowledge with the appropriate product or service.

One was the experience an acquaintance had with the tea-vendor at a Mumbai railway station, who had segmented his tea-concoctions by the train (and its passengers), customizing to their regional tastes.

The second was a music concert sponsored by a well-known motorbike brand. The audience was largely off-target and the event was clearly not successful for the bike brand, though the audience and the band itself had a great time. As the creator of the department store and the American inventor of the price ticket, John Wanamaker’s once said: “I know half of my advertising money is wasted, I just don’t know which half.”

It’s funny, how gut instincts and home-grown wisdom may quote often seem more successful than planning through facts and figures.

This is partly a function of India’s complexity as a country and a market.

Traditional marketing discipline calls for categorizing customers into segments that are similar within themselves, and distinct from each other. It assumes that there are large or at least measurable numbers of distinct groups of customers Within each group, the customers are assumed to behave and buy in similar ways, which are quite distinct from the other groups in the market.

The reality of life, of course, is that in any market, segments are almost always an artificial construct. In fact, it is becoming more difficult to find large segments that are cleanly demarcated – what’s more, in markets worldwide, customer segments have been blurring into each other.

The Indian market takes this complexity to another plane, and savvy marketers know this from personal experience. India as a market is anything but continuous or homogenous. This diversity is brought out by a media-group’s advertisements series on its radio-channel that make the point about India being a country with 145 festivals in a calendar of 365 days. Or as I’ve often heard Kishore Biyani and others say, in India the mix of language, food and culture changes every 80-100 kilometers.

Let’s face it, most mass products that are marketed in the same way across the country, are handled that way due to manufacturing or distribution economics. Some may even be handled uniformly due to the lack of marketing imagination. It is certainly not due to customers across the country being identical.

How well we can understand the dimensions and the differences can mean the difference between success or even survival and abject failure.

Here is an article that describes the benefits and pitfalls of consumer analyses in India. (Slicing The Market)

[Note: With a 6 MB filesize , the download may take a while if you have a slow connection!]

It often seems like “Scaling Up = Dumbing Down.”

As an organisation starts to scale up, the challenge is getting everyone to work the same way as earlier. And Process with a capital “P” takes over.

In the absence of inspiring and totally involved leadership, it often is just a hop and a skip from Bureaucracy.

If a lot of people feel the same way, there may yet be hope for small businesses and the more personalized touch.

In my view, India and China are two countries that can change companies.

Most analyses of “consumer India” are led by affluent analysts primarily based in the biggest cities. These incomplete analyses are followed avidly also by international companies to draw up their India strategy. Most do not even scratch the surface of the diversity of the country, let alone customize the approach.

There are reasonably large and distinct consumer segments in India–many are alien to most companies based in the developed markets, because they have been extinct there for several decades.

The companies that seem to be succeeding are the ones who don’t come in expecting a billion-plus market (or even a “percentage” of that) hungering for their brand/product just as it is sold in the US or Europe. They are the ones who take the time, and show the patience, to understand the specifics that their target segment in India is looking for.

They are the ones who are prepared to to the extra mile in tailoring their offering to India. Some may even launch new products in India and then take them elsewhere.

If you’re prepared to discard the filter of the history of developed markets when looking at India, then opportunities abound.

Fresh out of a meeting with a large international retailer this morning, I would like to share something that I mentioned to them: that the Indian market is not as large as it seemed to most people 2-3-5 years ago (whatever base figures they may be using to calculate potential market size); neither is it as small as it seems today to brands that entered the market 10-15 years ago.

There are significantly different dynamics at play, which make the Indian market totally different from the growth curve you might have been accustomed to in the history of the US, Europe, or even more recently, China.

However, some fundamental realities remain common on the consumer side:

• Given choices, consumers will choose

• Given better environments, consumers generally will migrate to them

• Given lower prices for comparable products, consumers will compare, and choose not to spend beyond what is necessary

• A better merchandise mix will win out over a narrow / poor mix

The realities of real-estate costs are the same for everyone–whether the retailer is domestic or international. Domestic retailers may have an advantage in being able to move quicker on closing deals but foreign retailers may have deeper pockets to play with.

Politics remain the same as well–China opened its markets to investment by foreign retailers after allowing its domestic retailers to grow in scale; Eastern European countries may raise the occasional stink about the lack of competition when two foreign retailers decide to swap assets; even in their home markets, Wal-Mart and Tesco face determined opposition. In India we’re seeing just another version being played out.

All this, while everyone is mostly fighting for the top-tier consumer. There is a wider market out there, my friends, a very different one that needs to be understood well, together with its implications for your business model.