Retail Plus
Hyderabad
Shopping is with the parents
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Shopping with parents beats mall browsing with friends feel most teens. We look at why…
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Amit plays the waiting game, biding his time. His mom can’t decide between the blue outfit that she calls ‘lilac’ and the brown that she calls ’champagne’. These are the finalists of a two hour shopping marathon. Lying discarded in a colourful heap are the ‘also rans’, mysteriously identified as persimmon, azure, aquamarine and buttercup!
Amit 18, aspiring visual communications student, being a productive sort kills time with ‘people watching’ of a creative kind. He mentally files away little tableaus of people and happenings for later use.
“Which one?” mom asks. Amit excitedly points out the brown one, hoping the wait was over and they could get on with his own shopping.
“Are you sure?”
He nods his assent vigorously. “I’ll take the lilac,” she tells the salesperson, “The champagne makes me look fat! Don’t you think so, Ami?”
Ami is non committal. He knows the value of Patience. After five grueling months of preparing for his board exams, sacrificing his social life and denying himself some of life’s simple pleasures, he reckons its payback time. His shopping list is long and varied and designed to reactivate a hectic social life. And his parents, like all good parents who have shared the agony of the board exams with their teen kids, will have to bear the brunt of it.
Teens love shopping with parents. It’s an activity where friends are a surprise second choice. Shweta, 17, says, “I love shopping with my parents. It’s only for junk jewellery or accessories that I shop with my friends. With my parents I can extend the budget a bit and buy things I may not have planned to buy.”
Nihara 18, bubbly and vivacious, exclaims, “I love shopping with my mom. I call her my ATM. Any Time Money!” Mom gets a crushing hug for ‘just being there for her’.
Nihara and Mom exchange conspiratorial grins and confess, “When we travel abroad, my dad and brother are forced to tag along shopping with us. They generally carry all the bags... and they wait patiently with all our clothes outside trial rooms. Can’t take more than two pieces inside you know... so somebody has to hold on to all the stuff.”
Reluctant clothes horses and pack mules, Dad and brother, dysfunctional shoppers, are rewarded at the end of the day. “We choose all their clothes. They have no idea what suits them and what doesn’t.”
Teens clash with parents on almost every issue that needs a decision but strangely enough 9 out of 10 teens we spoke to, prefer to shop with either both or one parent partly because it is a habit that has continued since childhood but mostly because they know parents can’t deny them anything.
SUNITA SURESH
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Retail Plus
Hyderabad
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