Tata’s may deploy ethnography to know customers better

Tata Consumer Products would invest 5% of its total sales in innovation and developing new products across mass and premium categories, says Vikas Gupta, Head – Global R&D.

Tata Consumer Products Ltd. (TCPL) said it would deploy ethnography, a study through direct observation of users, to gain insights into how consumers interact with things in their natural environment to understand them better and deliver what exactly they require.

TCPL may introduce ethnography at its newly-opened research and development facility- cum packaging and sensory science centre in Bengaluru to know customers better, said Vikas Gupta, Head – Global R&D, Tata Consumer Products.

“We have not looked at a time frame, but ethnography is something that we will be investing in the future,’‘ he stated.

Retail ethnography, which studies the way people react to products and services, their interaction with objects in the retail setting, their speech and emotions, and their experiences during the use of a product or service, is slowly gaining momentum globally.

He said the company would invest 5% of its total sales in innovation and developing new products across mass and premium categories. In the first two quarters of the current fiscal, the company reported sales of ₹6,690 crore while during 2021-22, sales stood at ₹12,425 crore.

On the company’s focus on millets as a category, Mr. Gupta said, the year 2023 would be celebrated as the International Year of Millets with the objective to increase the awareness and usage of these small whole gains.

Mr. Gupta said, “There is a collective initiative to take millets to the centre stage. Under Tata Soulfull portfolio, we have been expanding and adding millet-based products and contributing to this initiative,’‘ adding, “In the scientific and research level, we are hopeful of some breakthrough coming up in the millets space.’‘

TCPL’s newly set-up R&D facilities in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Sri City in Andhra Pradesh employ diverse talent, including PhDs in physics, chemistry, biotechnology, biochemistry, engineering, packaging technologists, food scientists, chefs and nutritionists.