Indian Consumer Kaun Hai? The Class-Based Grammar of Indian Advertising

Abstract

Advertising proves to be a particularly useful source of images, stories, and vocabulary, to study the globalization of the Indian economy and the construction of Indian identity. The authors analyze how advertising executives and other cultural producers, such as magazine editors, try to answer the question “Indian consumer kaun hai?” (Who is the Indian consumer?) while trying to develop narratives that can represent Indian ways of living. In a country as diverse as India, this is an extremely difficult task. Drawing from a content analysis of the Hindi and English versions of India Today as well as interviews with Indian advertising executives, the authors detail how cultural producers imagine Indian consumers. This work illuminates the striking differences, between the imagined cultural world of the English speaking elite, and their vernacular counterparts. By showing the importance of the English language, and Western cultural references in indexing the “modern Indian,” this work contributes to macromarketing efforts to study globalization and its effects.