Ahead of his interview at a software firm in Bangalore, Suresh Baliga is at his neighbourhood store, searching the shelves for shoe polish. After rummaging through shelves, but unable to find it, he asks an attendant, who directs him to a row of canisters that say ‘shoe shampoo’. Baliga is surprised: he was expecting to buy the wax shoe polish that came in those flat, round tins.

Has it disappeared? As it turns out, not completely. The shoeshine boys at Mumbai’s suburban railway stations still use them, so they are available somewhere. But wax shoe polish is among a number of familiar product categories that are disappearing.

Remember Sony’s Walkman that spawned a number of imitators? Apple’s iPods are just the latest personal music devices — along with other MP3 players that have replaced cassette-playing Walkmans. Even audiocassettes are
almost history, as are videocassette recorders (VCRs) and videotapes.

Many of these products — and product categories — have been replaced by better and advanced versions. The rate of obsolescence in consumer electronics keeps growing faster every decade. But even at the edge of consumer and personal care products such as tooth powder or talcum powder, customers like Baliga find that familiar products are slowly disappearing from store shelves.

The changes are often subtle and slow, but manage to surprise us nevertheless. What is happening in consumer markets? For one thing, demographic and lifestyle changes — helped by rising incomes — have changed consumer preferences. Then, technology and innovation are helping replace existing product versions with newer ones.

Slowly and surely, we are at the leading edge of shifts in consumer behaviour that is changing many industries — agreed, mostly small ones – and firms. Individually, many of these vanishing product categories are small markets, but cumulatively they add up to a lot.

Times Are Changing
Bhushan Kumar, managing director, T Series, which was once India’s largest cassette manufacturer, recalls the hard times his company had when the world was transitioning to compact discs (CDs). “We used to make 800,000 cassettes a day eight or nine years ago,” he says. “Now, we are down to about 10,000, mainly for markets in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.” But Kumar also believes that they saw it coming and embraced the newer technology to remain a successful in music publishing and marketing business.

In the lead-up to the monsoon in Mumbai, the demand for mosquito repellents tends to rise. The mosquito mat — the square pad placed in an electrical device whose fumes repelled the mosquito — was once a staple product. It is losing popularity, and being replaced by liquid repellents. But the mosquito coil, an even earlier product serving the same market, is still available in rural India where electricity is harder to come by. Similarly, toothpowder that was manufactured by multinational Colgate Palmolive and Dabur may have disappeared from cities, but is still available in rural markets.

“We cannot call it a vanishing category,” says Dabur’s marketing head (oral category), Rana Banerjee. “There is still a lot of potential in the segment.” He says the IRS data indicates that about 24 per cent of  households still use toothpowder, though he did not offer details.

Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are the largest markets for toothpowder, Banerjee adds. Another product that shifted to the rural market is talcum powder, the use of which has declined in cities and been replaced by roll-on deodorants and sprays.