Morning, noon, eve & night brands now part of day in the life of Indian Urban Consumer

‘The New Norm’ has meant that organisations and brand marketers have not just grappled with dynamic changes but many sectors have witnessed paradigm shifts in consumer behaviour and purchase over the last two years and as consumers continue to struggle to return to pre-pandemic routines. Leading Market research and insights firm Market Xcel, today unveiled ‘BrandXcel’, a first of its kind exhaustive study delving into ‘The New Emerging Consumer’, post the pandemic. The study takes a unique and refreshing view of consumer behaviour by analysing their brand preferences at different times of a routine day and decoding preferences of the ‘Digi-gen’, as BrandXcel coins the millennial and Gen Z consumers.

The study by Market Xcel provides a deep dive into product categories and features the top 50 brands by Day Parts. The survey ranks the preference for personal care brands high in the mornings, food tech and delivery brands at noon and at night, e-commerce brands also in the noon, and OTT brands at night time. Colgate, Lifebuoy and Closeup have emerged as the key morning brands. The afternoon timeframe is a highly populated one dominated by a mix of digital, mobile, food-tech, internet related, payment gateway and personal care brands. Night time, though not as highly populated as the afternoon, also includes internet related, mobile, shopping and personal care brands.

In the top 10 brands’ ranking, the age-old favourites have been nudged out by new-age digital brands like Airtel, Jio, Google, WhatsApp, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube and Netflix. Only two grand old brands made the list – Amul and Colgate. Surprisingly, Amazon is the only ecommerce brand in the top 10 and Amul is the only food brand.  Tech-based niche enablers like Swiggy, Zomato and Big Basket dominated the 11-20 ranks.

BrandXcel also categorises the top 100 brands and their impact into 6 distinct segments to depict population size, providing unique insights to marketers, to better understand consumer goals and buying behaviour. POPULOUS MEGAPOLIS includes brands with high impact and high brand population; OVERCROWDED MEGAPOLIS features brands with medium impact and high brand population; CAPACIOUS MEGAPOLIS lists high impact and medium brand population; TRANSFORMATIONAL MARKET includes brands with medium impact and medium brand population; EXPAND & ACCELERATE includes brands with medium impact and low brand population and RENEW & REFRESH features brands with low impact and low brand population.

Speaking about the study, Manish Narang, Founder, MarketXcel, said, “BrandXcel is our continued effort to stay on top of the game when it comes to analysing consumer behaviour shifts and brand impact. While in our two decades of providing research services, we have always witnessed the consumer evolve and grow with the times, the pandemic in the last two years had us all witness such a paradigm change for the first time and we wanted to be the first to delve into it and also use the opportunity to take a different and refreshed approach to the study. Hence the mapping of brand preference by day parts. BrandXcel aims to provide marketers few insights into what the Indian Urban Consumer is looking for now.

Vishal Oberoi, CEO, Market Xcel elaborated on the survey methodology, “Market Xcel studies over 1000 brands  and looked at the top 100 more closely and derived insights from the study  that included over 8750 people from the target Group aged 18-55 years and living in the tp 25 Indian cities including metro, Tier I and Tier II. The survey covered all four regions of the country and we adopted a hybrid approach for data collection that included web-based interviews and in-person CAPI”

Ashwani Arora, Executive Director, MarketXcel, added, “The changing basket of brands that consumers find relevant now offers an opportunity to understand the underlying traits that make their identity more meaningful in such times. An assessment of brand ranking offers marketers an opportunity to reflect on changed consumer behaviour and its impact in the post pandemic era.  Combined with thought leadership and opinion pieces from few of the country’s best marketing minds, an easy to consume, coffee table book presentation of the survey and its findings will ensure Brandxcel is the blue book for marketers to wade into the new norm.”

Findings and insights

• Personal care brands are at a peak in the morning, Food tech/delivery brands in the afternoon and night time, E-commerce brands like Big Basket dominate the afternoon period and OTT brands dominate the night time.
• ITC’s Aashirvaad’s association with evening and night indicates a change in breakfast consumption pattern of Indians as roti/pancake is largely being prepared during night.
• Haldiram’s dominance in the evening and at night show India’s preferred snack timing.
• When it comes to categories, Food (CPG), Personal Care, Mobile Phones, e-commerce and Haircare were the Top 5 in recall.
• Also, the most functional brands rank high on the list of the ‘Digi-gen’, who are a combination of a need for immediacy, intimacy/ personalization and on-demand & always on! The most successful brands are those that have demonstrated an intimate understanding of the Digi Gen.
• Brands that have collaborated better with the digital eco-system (e.g., Telcos with OTT, DTH, eComm, & other relevant surround Apps) in order to cater to the compelling need of the DigiGen, even if it poses competition, seem to mean more to consumers. Hence, we can see Food tech, OTT, ecommerce as well as Mobile network and other such brands in the top 50.
• Byju’s, Vedantu, Meesho, Dailyhunt, 1Mg, Udaan and Sharechat garnering consumer recall in start-up rankings.
• Hygiene, home care and laundry brands like Harpic, Surf Excel and Godrej products are relevant throughout the day against the conventional belief that they matter only at a certain time.

Lists the top brands under different categories and Colgate tops personal care, Amul tops Food, Pepsico tops Beverages, Clinic Plus tops Haircare, Amazon tops e-commerce, Honda tops automobiles, LIC tops BFSI, Lakme tops cosmetics and Aaj Tak tops Media and Entertainment among others.

Market Xcel has captured the market research findings in an exclusive coffee table book format, BrandXcel features expert marketing insights from Rama Bijapurkar, Hitu Chawla, Amit Kumar Shrivastava, P Madhavan, Chitra Narayanan, Karthik Srinivasan, Lloyd Mathias, Achint Setia, Anuja Mishra, Mohan Krishnan, Rajesh Kurup & Jayen Mehta, among others.

Multiple key insights have emerged from the research and they are available on: https://market-xcel.com/index.html

About Market Xcel

Established in 2000. Market xcel is a fast-growing consumer and market insights company. Headquartered at New Delhi in India, Market Xcel operates from 14 offices in the contry and is present across the globe, in the Middle East, East Africa, Africa, East Asia and SAARC. Market Xcel provides customised market research services to clients across domains. With its method neutral approach, that keeps the client’s business and growth at the fore, Market Xcel transforms data into insights that inspire organisations to make bigger and better decisions, enabling growth. Market Xcel’s investor partners include Nomura and Infobridge Asia from Japan.