Financial Times

Profiling The Sri Lankan Consumer: Multiple Portraits and Manifest Patterns, by Uditha Liyanage, Postgraduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, 2005.

Review by Roshini Jayaweera, Research Assistant, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka.

The major objective of the book is to provide a good understanding of the consumer in an increasingly complex market system since the late 1970s.

According to the book, the business person continues to chant a Marketing Mantra of which there is little practical evidence. Marketing Mantra is about the consumer being in the hub of everything the firm does. Adam Smith postulated that the consumer is the sole end and purpose of production. Within the modern firms, marketing exists to realise each individual firm’s aims. That is to make more profit by selling more. Marketing has a “customer focus” which is the major reason behind the marketer’s growing competency. It is important to note that understanding the consumer as she or he “is” rather than as she or he “ought to be” is a complex as well as difficult task. The book provides a detailed introduction on this topic.

The second chapter can be divided into two sections. The first being population composition and the second is its implications. This chapter has discussed total population and its age categories. It identifies two main reasons for the declining fertility in Sri Lanka: increasing age at marriage and increasing age at first child birth. In addition, this chapter explains the reasons behind the increasing retired population in Sri Lanka. It postulates that the greater participation of women in the labour force, delayed marriage and an increasing number of unmarried women has led to an increase in the number of households that are headed by females. The book predicts that after 2010 overall dependency rate will increase due to the acceleration in the elderly dependency rate. The rest of the chapter has been reserved for the implications. It recommends marketers to produce more “retirement products” for the increasing retired population and “convenience products” for females participating in the labour force.

The third chapter entitled “Economic Man” provides a descriptive account of consumer expenditure, income and employment patterns. In this chapter we can observe a marked increase in private consumption, telecommunications, electricity, gas, water, sanitation and investment.

It describes a positive reduction of the food ratio and income received by the top deciles of total population as indicators of economic progress. In addition, it presents an explanation about the flip side of the economic man. Sector wise income disparity and income disparity within the urban sector are the drawbacks for the recognition of flip side of the economic man as a key to profile Sri Lankan consumer. Therefore it provides three components to profile the consumer. They are poverty, literacy and employment status.

The fourth chapter entitled “Social Man” focuses on the social strata which have been changing under different economic conditions. It has divided society into four groups: Traditional Middle Class (TMC), New Urban Middle Class (NUMC), New Working Class (NWC) and Alienated Rural Youth (ARY).TMC kept the wheels of the administrative structure turning for the ruling class during the period of 1950 to 1970s and consider occupation and heritage as social status. However at present it has lost its hegemony and is numerically insignificant.

It has described the members of these social strata and their characteristics, but it does not provide an analysis on the impacts on the demand pattern. NUMC considers the private sector as the leading agent of economic and social changes. As a result of liberalization, there is a marked expansion of the urban informal sector like providers of goods and passenger transport.

This book examines the consumer from the demographic, economic, social and cultural perspectives. Overall, the book presents comprehensive information on the local consumer, based on Youth Survey 2002, A. C. Nielson Lanka 2002 and various reports. This book is worth reading by marketers though it comes with a few shortcomings. In chapter four it discusses alienated rural youth in terms of employment rather than in terms of consumption. It postulates consumption is the determinant of social status but does not specify consumption categories.

Despite such shortcomings, this book outlines ways in which the government should look upon the nation’s growth when the private sector fails to be the engine of the nation’s growth. The government can encourage the private sector to expand its scope with creating jobs and productivity.