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A fetish for owning multiple brands of functional products is catching up among urban Indian consumers.
While apparel, bags and shoes figure strongly in this behaviour pattern, consumers are nowadays seen sporting different watches and eyewear for different occasions.
Sporty watches monitor heart beat rates while work watches indicate different time zones. Eyewear for playing tennis is different from the one worn for driving or for partying.
Watches and spectacles, known as ‘functional' products are also becoming ‘style accessories.'
“We now have watch collections for work, for sport, for party and for traditional occasions,” says Mr Somprabh Singh, Senior Manager, Marketing, Titan Industries.
Although there are no formal studies, consumer buying patterns indicate that among the SEC A 1 consumer, owning three watches is no longer taboo.
“And women behave no differently from men when it comes to owning more than one item of a product,” he says.
Fashion category
Bollywood stars such as Preity Zinta and Hrithik Roshan have pushed eyewear into the ‘fashion' category, although it is still in the nascent stages of the ‘collecting' behaviour.
Mr Jayanth Bhuraghavan, Managing Director of opthalmic lens-maker Essilor India, says that among SEC A consumers, owning two or three pairs of spectacles is the trend, while the international figure is five.
Mr S. Ravikant, COO of Titan's eyewear division, feels that eyewear is still used for vision correction than as a style accessory, but the trend is changing among SEC A consumers.
Titan recently launched its Shimmer range of eyewear that comes studded with Swarovski crystals.
“The response has been good and consumers of Shimmer are owners of multiple pairs as Shimmer cannot be a regular wear,” he says.
Mr Ankur Bisen, Associate Vice-President, Retail & Consumer Products at management consulting firm Technopak Advisors, says this trend is catching up because marketers are deepening relationships with existing clients through product development and category extensions approaches.
“If a strong brand has a strong lifestyle appeal, it can cut across categories too,” he says.
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