India trysts with Modern Retail

Ambience Mall, Gurgaon

Image Courtesy: http://www.henshall.com/ 

Modern Retail is one sector that has boomed in India in past few years. It has moved way forward from its turbulent beginnings with protests against Reliance Fresh outlets by local grocery sellers. Today, everything conceivable that we purchase for our daily use is available in some form of organized retail format. Be it food & grocery, clothing and garments, jewellery, furniture, crockery, electronics…you name it – it is there.

However, what has always interested me is in observing small little things and ways in which we as Indians like to shop. We have moved from mom and pop stores and the bazaars of yore (not really yore I guess) to the new age and happening way to shop per say, but at the end of the day, that was the way we used to shop and this new way is imported. Recently, a report named The Great Indian Bazaar published by McKinsey satiated my desire to know how we shop as consumers in these new format stores. The findings from the report were published in Mint and you can check it here by Veena Venugopal. However, here I am capturing some interesting points from the report which may pique your interest enough to read the entire report.

• We don’t like empty malls and stores. Let there be the same old sense of Bazaar chaos. If a store is empty and there isn’t much hustle bustle, we won’t enter it. We don’t think that the space is well managed, but we think that the prices are high or the products are of inferior quality. I always get irritated when there is ‘counter closed’ sign and I am standing in a queue. And now I hear, it is done purposely to have a rush! Can’t fight the Indian consumer psyche!

• Best shoppers for clothes are 2 girls together (as if we did not know that!). They help each other decide, goad each other to buy more and always shop more together. Men move around the aisles while thinking for what to buy and women already have it all in their minds or lists. Men chose smaller baskets to shop while women like carts. If the two sexes happen to come and shop together, it isn’t a convenient situation for the store guy at all. The guy is desperate and waiting to bail out while the lady is experimenting, trying, window shopping. How many of us have experienced this? I have!

• We are still modest as compared to westerners. Women in India prefer conservative necklines. Marks and Spencer had to customize before opening shop in India. Women prefer low waist jeans to any other fit of jeans in India. They don’t like flaunting their thighs as much. A show of belly is OK (saree legacy continues!). Organized retailers sell little quantities of skirts and shorts.

• We love colors. M&S sells Polo neck T-Shirts in only 5 shades around the world. In India, this number stands at 30! We need different shades, we would like to match and not wear the same colors daily. Makes perfect sense to me!

• We can be solved chopped and cleaned vegetables, some labor of cooking taken off our backs – however, the tastes we want are our very own. If you come and tell us that this much is to be added in this dish to make it tasty, well, you may as well be ready to pack off and advise elsewhere.

• You can’t sell shirts here if they don’t have pockets! It becomes a defining reason for choosing a shirt over the other. They wear jackets over their shirts abroad, however, in India; we need those pockets to put some useful business cards, our pen and other knickknack.

• Trial rooms help us formulate some important behavioral concepts when it comes to garments buying in a retail store. Here is how. If a man goes for a trial, it has been observed that more or less, he ends up buying that garment. Hence, his visit to a trial room is a very close indicator of his intent to purchase that item. However, if a woman goes for trial, the same justification doesn’t hold. Trial for an Indian [and I am guessing of any nationality] woman is just one of the many steps that ultimately makes her buy the garment. Women have a greater number of trial rooms (if the section is different from men’s else, you will find more women in trial rooms). Women usually need a friend or companion waiting outside (obviously to approve if the garment suits her or not). Hence, retail stores usually provide an assistant if a woman comes alone to shop to help her buy the garment of her choice (and possibly induce her to buy).

• We need to search. Pull things out and judge them. See their color and feel them. If we don’t like it, we throw it and try searching for another one! This is how we have shopped for ages. This is how we continue to shop still. Ever wondered why more and more products are being sold in bins at your Modern Retail stores? Hunting for things and then selecting one gives us a satisfying feeling of selecting the best product for ourselves for a price that we thought is a good value for the product. Hence, bin shopping is good in India!

• We don’t like ready-to-eat or cold stored things much. Refrigerators until recent past were out of reach for many sections of Indian society. We believe to eat fresh vegetables and fruits and being a predominantly sub-tropical country, things don’t last without storage. We don’t shop for our veggies in a fortnight but more in 2-3 days. Hence, we are more aware of the prices too. So, no bluffing here. If it isn’t fresh, we know it and we won’t buy it! The Great Indian Bazaar says that 65% of Indian will never purchase pre-packaged food as compared to 24% Chinese and 6% Americans.

• Some correlations: People who purchase jeans are more likely to buy sunglasses too. Women who purchase Salwar-Kurta are more likely to purchase ethnic footwear too. Women who buy office wear are more likely to purchase cosmetics. Habits of 1.45 million shoppers were scrutinized by Shoppers Stop and correlation analysis must have been run!

• Children are big influencers! Of course they are! We did not need any report for this. They usually help up adding the items on menu and at times, they are well informed and logical about their buying decisions.

• Let us face it. We like to save whatever money we can and also get any freebies or any other gifts. If we happen to possess a loyalty card on which we can accrue points and redeem, we would try as much as possible to plan our shopping in that store. We wait and club all our requirements and head to our store with our plastic money and loyalty cards to gain. It is always a fayeda ka sauda(transaction worth a benefit)

• Indians have started shopping online, especially the brand conscious ones who don’t have access to malls and an improved retail scene by the virtue of not living in a metro. 20-40 age group people are very comfortable shopping online. Big brands are tapping this channel.

• We are one big happy family. Aisles in stores are wider to accommodate more people who shop together. We shop for more color and demand a wider variety to choose from. We want the best from our store experience for every paisa we spend. Period.

Retail truly is fascinating and small details if not taken care of can really make or break a brand, a category or even a mall for that matter. When you go shopping next time, think of this and may be you’ll shop better!