Consumer gains from different retail formats

Abstract

India has witnessed a robust economic growth over the past decade or so. This has also resulted in the increased disposable income and improved standard of living of the Indian middle class population. Many industries/companies have been quick to take advantage of this India Story. Modern retail in India was considered to be in its nascent phase. Over 97% of the retail market in India was unorganized. Modern retailers recognized this opportunity for growth in the developing economy. Established players in the retail sector such as Big Bazar, Shopper’s Stop and Spencer’s were joined by big Indian players like Reliance, Tata, Birla and Bharati. Even the international players like Wal-Mart, Metro and Tesco etc. wanted to create their presence in India. These players made significant investments and expanded their presence rapidly across India over the past few years. The global economic crisis has had its impact on the India Growth Story. Many companies have been forced to rethink their expansion plans; some have delayed their investments plans and some have totally dropped their plans. Modern retail has been significantly affected by the fallout of this crisis. Many players have had to close down shops because of low footfalls and high rental costs. They have also reassessed their future strategies as the industry has entered into a consolidation mode. For example, Subhiksha had embarked on an ambitious expansion plan to create a pan India presence. But internal inefficiencies coupled with the effect of the crisis have forced it to close its outlets at many locations. In these testing times for the organized retail industry, we wanted to study the “Consumer Gains” that the modern retailers are trying to provide to the consumers. We wanted to look into the various needs of the consumers and tried to understand how the retailers are trying to address these needs at the same trying to remain profitable and survive the downturn. For this purpose, we first defined what we exactly meant by Consumer Gains. We then selected a target group of consumers. For this target segment, we wanted to understand the buying pattern and analyze their needs. Then we selected a product category for which we wanted to study the retailer behavior. We then tried to understand the needs of the consumer for that product category. Then we tried to understand the industry structure. Here we tried to find how the industry is organized to provide value to the consumers. This includes the various retail formats that exist to service the different needs of the consumer. We had elaborately defined the parameters of the target segment that we had chosen for the purpose of our study. Also we had chosen mobile handsets as our desired product category. Thus we wanted to study “Consumer Gains from the different retail mobile handset outlets”.