We have one common laptop between us. I take it to my office in the morning and once I returned home she monopolises it for the rest of the evening checking mails networking in the Facebook appreciating hundreds of friends/semi friends on their original stolen, plagiarised posts clicking likes on their never ending changed profiles.

I got used to this pattern till I noticed a significant change in her Facebook sojourn. Like all changes it did not hit me overnight, its manifestation was visible in a different chain of events.
I discovered the change when I noticed that the most frequent visitors to my flat in last couple of months are not our friends, relatives and acquaintances but boys of different courier services delivering goods purchased online. The purchase has no predictable pattern, it varies from a revolving mop to a pack of dangerously shining set of kitchen knives shoved in a multi-slot wooden sheath stand, perfect prop for a murder mystery. One fine morning I discovered a pack of tummy trimming oil in my shaving corner with a hand written message (massage).
This is too much and needs to be sorted out. I found her deeply immersed in the laptop screen. I peered over her laptop, Facebook page has been replaced by sites like homeshop 18, flipcart, olx, jabong and even makemytrip.com. I clearly remember last year she turned down my request to book an air ticket for my daughter who studied in another state saying she is absolutely uncomfortable with these online purchases — “I don’t like interacting with machines, how can one handle solitary purchases; and then there are those agonising moments when you have made your credit card online payment and all you are seeing is a vortex of uncertainty going on spinning with occasional warning don’t touch the refresh button and then everything stops with a penultimate verdict Internet explorer can’t find the page! What has happened to my payment!”
That was just one year back; where did these loads of problem vanished. Who sorted them out? Who engineered this shift? I suddenly remember that I had been receiving less and less indent of purchase messages in my mobile on my way back home. There are also zero requests at the weekend to take her down to some shopping mall for last couple of months. It seems that the online shopping guys must have found better ways of connecting with consumer. More I thought more I realised that they have done it not by doing something new but by questioning/addressing some basic premises of traditional shopping. Here are the premises:
If you can make your product talk consumer will not miss the absence of sales person. All you need is the help of a neutral expert. In tech world they are the apps.
Shopping alone can be exciting if the shopper’s confidence of making a choice can be enhanced.
Price can be harnessed as a powerful surprise quotient, creating a sense of win which is still a rare feeling in real life purchase in India.
In virtual world you are the only customer — you have complete liberty to toy with the idea of buying a brand which in real life you would have discarded as a pipe dream. You suddenly connect with your larger than life self.
The computer screen acts like a magic mirror obliging all your wild dreams & desire;
It is a sweatless world of shopping where all the base things and pain attached with the act of shopping like extracting bargain, attention and haggling for price fear of online payment/exchange have been magically removed and photo shopped.
You get discounts you can only dream of; apps will tell you which product in which price range is the best value for money and why. You need no so called expert/ friend to tell and approve your choice because now you know better than them. And don’t worry about payments. Do it your way. Pay on delivery. If you don’t like it return... We will change. No questions asked.
Online is crafting out a new language of relationship. There is a change in the tonality of man & woman relationship in a new breed of commercial of online shopping.
Take for instance an ebay commercial. It’s Sunday, wife nagging husband to go on shopping and husband made a feeble appeal to shop online only to make wife go on a traditional tired “can’t you spare a few hours of shopping time with me in a month... oh you get bored outside the trial room and your back pains carrying baskets...” The traditional build up to the domestic drama took a dramatic turn once she saw the ebay discounts and wisdom starts oozing from her words. “Yes I understand you too have one Sunday only and you need rest to refresh” — a complete transformation!
The one on Bluestone is even more interesting as it challenges the norm that buying needs an occasion. Husband’s question “What’s the occasion of (wife’s) online shopping of jewellery” drew an unusual response from wife “my husband does not look at me anymore”, again a traditional accusation of a wife being neglected by the husband. It’s a bedroom situation and the husband tried to be intimate to prove his point of desire for her. His advances were resisted by the wife; she paid her husband back in his own words— “What is the occasion?” A naughty, subtle slice of bedroom drama that brings in a whole new paradigm of women’s life; a life lived at one’s own terms and not at what has been set for her.
Online marketing is a part of the emerging mindset of consumers who are questioning the status quo in an evolving world. Marketers please take note; It is better to be present online and wait for your consumer than losing the new wave altogether. By the time new research report proves the point the opportunity is already lost. Online is no longer a selection of a medium of shopping, it is a way of life.