New sales channels - traffic signal

Driving in one of the metros in India? Watch out of your window at one of those numerous clones of traffic signals and observe what happens for the next 30 seconds. A swarm of urchins, vendors intersperse into the traffic. For the next 30 seconds, each one tries desperately to make sales. Everything sells at the signal; right from green leafy vegetables, fruits, flowers, newspapers, magazines to huge artifacts . One might wonder why would anyone buy a huge painting or a bulky flower vase at a traffic signal, especially with Indian Marketeers believing strongly in the principle of touch-feel. But you see these items being sold. Once I happened to ask one of them whether these high involvement products do sell at the traffic signal and he said yes they do.

In Bangalore,I have seen women clean the leafy vegetables, what is called "Souppu" in Kannada, on the footpath by the side of the traffic signal and sell it when the light turns red. Originally what was the domain of the urchins has largely become a sales channel today. I was not able to find much on the history of when this started , but whoever started this. had a hell lot of creativity.

Now some analysis of a traffic signal from the point of view of a sales channel. With traffic congestion increasing at most cities, there is no dearth of consumers stopping by. You know there are consumers incoming at a particular rate, ( data collected from past , would differ according to time of the day and season). There is really no data about these consumers , no segmentation variables available but you do know generic products like fruits , vegetables and maybe some FMCG products can sell. Extremely perishable items like newspapers sell really well at signals.

So amidst the irritating cavalcade of vehicles, constant honking of cars and bikes, these vendors are able to break the clutter and catch the attention span of their customers. And they do know their customer well. The vegetables are neatly packed, and change is kept handy. Moreover the small time frame does not allow too much bargaining.

This is all fine for our daily goods, but what about a wall hanging or a vase or painting. There is immense scope to cheat.

And finally coming to the urchins. They are masters of emotional marketing. Usually accompanied by a baby , or a broken limb, they are able to convey their message to their customers who out of pity give them pennies. Again they play the volume game here. Within a time frame of 30 seconds, they know who to target, and exactly after how much time they should discard the first car and move on to a more promising next. Talk about optimisation of profits!

I'm still eager to know what all can be sold at a traffic signal in India, and whether this channel would continue to flourish.