The Great Indian Retail Story - Differentiation !!

Retail is one benchmark sector growing at a second fastest rate after the IT industry in the last couple of years. Retail is the new sunrise sector being recognized by Indian corporate bigwigs and entrepreneurs alike as the best investment to give promised returns on a much higher scale vis-à-vis the other conventional modes of investments. The Retail industry in India has been growing at a Compounded Average Growth rate of 46.64% in the last 3 years. It is slated to grow at a CAGR of 40% in the next few years. The astounding growth has attracted everyone from multibillionaire Giants like the Future Group, Mukesh Ambani Group, Bharti group and TATA's to the medium size ventures like RPG's Spencer, Aditya Birla Group or SPINACH group of hypermarts making them jump on the fast moving retail wagon. The Indian Retail industry is about 2% of the worlds organized retail market which is valued at around USD 25 Billion. Retail has an expected growth rate forecasted at a whopping 25% every year which makes it one of the most promising industries in the ever growing Indian economy. India is said to cross the USD 21.5 Billion mark by the year 2010.

This rapidly growing retail sector has made entrepreneurs pump in money make investments haphazardly without any proper planning or focused business outlook, this is forever true in terms of medium size retailers like Subhiksha who just rapidly expand in metro cities after setting up shop without realizing the potential demand or forecasted supply chain requirements specially in cities like Mumbai which have grown along the length and not on the sides. Unavailability of basic FMCG at Subhiksha stores last month in Mumbai shows the growing need for retailers to consolidate their expertise and grow with focused planning and implementation. The haphazard growth has cost retailers to skip many vital learning curves in the product life cycle of the retail sector costing them more than just opportunity cost of operations with valuable experience in running a retail operation in the unexpected and diverse consumer markets of India's nook and corners. There are certain cities like Pune and Gurgaon which have more than 3-4 outlets in a given area of 5 square kilometers which has continuously increased the choice of shopping destinations for target customers not only from that area but also from nearby areas. With an increasing growth rate of the sector per se as well as increasing choice, there is a huge demand driving the reins of the retail sector these days – DIFFERENTIATION!! A need to differentiate has made the retailers to constantly find newer avenues for making themselves more visible to customers so that they stand out among the crowd and attract a sizeable amount of the potential targeted customers.

Keeping the above mentioned aspect in mind, my FIRST TOPIC is on researching LAYOUT STRATEGIES currently employed by retailers as a means of differentiation. When consumers have a humongous choice, the Layout Grids of a given Hyper Mart plays an important role in converting walk-in customers into impulse buyers, managing the customer traffic on busy days and thus increasing the profit potential per footfall of the store. A Layout Strategy would include everything right from product placement / display, planning of corridors and design of grids so as to provide maximum visibility for all nooks and corners of the store. Layout Design would play an important role in impulse buying decisions as well as traffic flow of a store (the flow should be in such a way that customers walking in should pass out of the exit after having seen all products displayed in the store).

Anticipating such significant importance of Layout Strategies for current and future retail developments, there is an urgent need (among other needs); to concentrate and apply a push towards existing LAYOUT STRATEGIES employed by retailers.