I am next looking into building something to help people with weekly shopping things. During my visit to a mega market for grocery shopping, I was just watching people doing shopping. Here is what I observed:

1. Young-girls were busy with deodorant testing to choose the right fragrance. They did not plan for it. They just decided to get one, and were not in hurry. They talked about many of them and then, picked one.
2. Two brothers with wives in a discussion; they consume 2 kg of daal and no harm in taking one more packet of daal, and whether the rice quality is good.
3. 40 something friends with store coupons in hand – surfing the store.
4. On a busy Sunday evening in the market, it was interesting to see that only few of them cared to carry a list of items they wanted to purchase. I was at one time thinking shopping list to be key element for such app; still I found couple of them carrying yellow sticky note, small notebook paper portion with items listed there which they referred quite often. Interesting point here was      that some of them had it written in their native language (likely Telugu), not English.
5. One 45-50 something person – he was so organized to have full list of items written so legibly hand written with number bullets that I was awed.
6. Two 20 something friends busy finding a product with image displaying on their Samsung galaxy; finding it hard to find it in the huge store. If there was someone who told whether the product existed in the store and where – I guess they would have happy!
7. Family with teenagers – all of them enjoying the grocery shopping together.
8. 20 something software engineer with mom – mom telling what she wants, and son looking around and getting it.
9. Boyfriend with Samsung galaxy tab, and girlfriend with also with likely a smart phone, hand in hand, one shopping basket – busy discussing something other than shopping – nothing in the basket!
10. House wife – busy finding product with the most recent manufactured date.
11. I guess I found 1-2 people referring something on their smartphones that looked something to do with what they wanted to shop – one was WP8 yes! And one was likely Samsung note.
12. Many of them simply moving from one ally to next ally in the store to pick what the need to – window shopping. Not in hurry!
13. Seen few of the foreigners buying mostly soft drinks at the store.
14. Alphonso Mangoes new in the store – many checked the price and moved.
15. Crowd stood in front of the TV section when the Michael Jackson song (It’s dangerous) played on all the screen. Everyone watched it likely national anthem – no one moved until the song completed!

While one visit is hard to conclude behaviors, but few things stand out for this visit:

1. Not many people shop with goal to ‘get it done’. They are just there for many other reasons that range from – surf, explore, hangout together or simply time pass. Shopping is likely secondary or side activity for this set.
2. ‘get it done’ shopper is likely 30-45 range. Less than 30 are just there to hangout; greater than 45 are also likely there to kill time in the store.

More after next visit.