Men begin to enjoy shopping at hypermarkets
The Jakarta Post Jakarta
To kill time while waiting for his internist to show up in a hospital, 53-year-old Achmad decided to make a quick visit to a nearby hypermarket.
"Knowing that my son wanted a DVD player, I went to Makro to check out prices. I bought one right away because it was cheap," said Achmad, who frequently goes to hypermarkets for monthly grocery shopping with his family.
Achmad said he enjoyed going to hypermarkets because they provided more complete household goods than other modern retail outlets, such as supermarkets and minimarkets.
"Whenever I enter a hypermarket, I go straight to the electronic and hardware sections and my wife to the personal care and food sections," he said, adding that he prefers going to a hypermarket located inside a shopping center or mall.
Men living in cities in the country, just like Achmad, have begun to discover the benefits of shopping in the increasing number of hypermarkets, according to a recent survey by market research firm ACNielsen.
ACNielsen's 2004 ShopperTrends survey -- which interviewed 1,029 Indonesians aged 15 to 65 with a monthly expenditure of more than Rp 800,000 (US$83) between September and November last year -- revealed that the number of men shopping at hypermarkets had increased by 5 percent in the last seven days to 39 percent. In contrast, the number of women declined by 5 percent to 61 percent.
The survey -- conducted in Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya -- showed that besides enjoying staying in a cool, clean and comfortable space, the men could find various items of interest or just sit back and relax in the food court while their spouses were shopping.
ACNielsen Retailer and Business Development Director Yongky Surya Susilo said for married men, shopping was a way of spending quality time with their families and served as a media for self actualization in establishing their role as head of the family. As for singles, he said, it was more of a way to show off their capacity to buy expensive things.
The combination of routine grocery shopping and family recreation has shaped the Indonesian trade structure and behavior. Today, Indonesian shoppers from the middle and upper income bracket shopped at hypermarkets twice a month and went to supermarkets, as often as weekly or once in two weeks, he said.
Due to the trend, Yongky said advertising agencies were focusing their services more on helping large-format modern retailers, especially hypermarkets, to increase competitiveness.
"They have to compete by increasing efficiency, driving prices down, improving product supply, and creating innovative merchandising and a consumer-focused operation," he said.
Even though Achmad found shopping at hypermarkets a pleasure, there were negative impacts he found hard to control like purchasing "nice to have but unimportant" things.
"My wife got a little upset when I bought an air compressor and an electric drill, which I then rarely used," he said, adding as he bought too many goods at hypermarkets there tended to be an oversupply at home. (001)