RETAILING

Overview

The attitudinal shift of the Indian consumer in terms of "Choice Preference", "Value for Money" and the emergence of organised retail formats have transformed the face of Retailing in India. With a growth over 20 percent per annum over the last 5 years, organised retailing is projected to reach US$ 23 Billion by 2010.

The Indian retail industry though predominantly fragmented through the owner -run " Mom and Pop outlets" has been witnessing the emergence of a few medium sized Indian Retail chains, namely Pantaloon Retail, RPG Retail, Shoppers Stop, Westside (Tata Group) and Lifestyle International.

Given the attractiveness of the Indian retail sector, foreign retailers like Wal-Mart, Carrefour SA, Europe's largest retailer and Tesco Plc, the UK's largest retailer, were keen to enter this growing market, despite the Indian retail sector being closed to foreign direct investment (FDI).

In the last few years, Indians have gone through a dramatic transformation in lifestyle by moving from traditional spending on food, groceries and clothing to lifestyle categories that deliver better quality and taste. Modern retailing satisfies rising demand for such goods and services with many players entering the bandwagon in an attempt to tap greater opportunities.

The Growth Drivers

The Indian Retail growth can be attributed to the several factors including

• Demography Dynamics: Approximately 60 per cent of Indian population below 30 years of age.
  
• Double Incomes: Increasing instances of Double Incomes in most families coupled with the rise in spending power.
  
• Plastic Revolution: Increasing use of credit cards for categories relating to Apparel, Consumer Durable Goods, Food and Grocery etc.
  
• Urbanisation: increased urbanisation has led to higher customer density areas thus enabling retailers to use lesser number of stores to target the same number of customers. Aggregation of demand that occurs due to urbanization helps a retailer in reaping the economies of scale.
  
• Covering distances has become easier: with increased automobile penetration and an overall improvement in the transportation infrastructure, covering distances has become easier than before. Now a customer can travel miles to reach a particular shop, if he or she sees value in shopping from a particular location.

Over the years as the consumer demand increased and the retailers geared up to meet this increase, technology evolved rapidly to support this growth. The hardware and software tools that have now become almost essential for retailing can be into 3 broad categories.

Customer Interfacing Systems

• Bar Coding and Scanners

  Point of sale systems use scanners and bar coding to identify an item, use pre-stored data to calculate the cost and generate the total bill for a client. Tunnel Scanning is a new concept where the consumer pushes the full shopping cart through an electronic gate to the point of sale. In a matter of seconds, the items in the cart are hit with laser beams and scanned. All that the consumer has to do is to pay for the goods.

• Payment

  Payment through credit cards has become quite widespread and this enables a fast and easy payment process. Electronic cheque conversion, a recent development in this area, processes a cheque electronically by transmitting transaction information to the retailer and consumer's bank. Rather than manually process a cheque, the retailer voids it and hands it back to the consumer along with a receipt, having digitally captured and stored the image of the cheque, which makes the process very fast.

• Internet

  Internet is also rapidly evolving as a customer interface, removing the need of a consumer physically visiting the store.

Operation Support Systems

• ERP System

  Various ERP vendors have developed retail-specific systems which help in integrating all the functions from warehousing to distribution, front and back office store systems and merchandising. An integrated supply chain helps the retailer in maintaining his stocks, getting his supplies on time, preventing stock-outs and thus reducing his costs, while servicing the customer better.

• CRM Systems

  The rise of loyalty programs, mail order and the Internet has provided retailers with real access to consumer data. Data warehousing & mining technologies offers retailers the tools they need to make sense of their consumer data and apply it to business. This, along with the various available CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Systems, allows the retailers to study the purchase behavior of consumers in detail and grow the value of individual consumers to their businesses.

• Advanced Planning and Scheduling Systems

  APS systems can provide improved control across the supply chain, all the way from raw material suppliers right through to the retail shelf. These APS packages complement existing (but often limited) ERP packages. They enable consolidation of activities such as long term budgeting, monthly forecasting, weekly factory scheduling and daily distribution scheduling into one overall planning process using a single set of data.

  Leading manufactures, distributors and retailers and considering APS packages such as those from i2, Manugistics, Bann, MerciaLincs and Stirling-Douglas.

Strategic Decision Support Systems

• Store Site Location

  Demographics and buying patterns of residents of an area can be used to compare various possible sites for opening new stores. Today, software packages are helping retailers not only in their locational decisions but in decisions regarding store sizing and floor-spaces as well.

• Visual Merchandising

  The decision on how to place & stack items in a store is no more taken on the gut feel of the store manager. A larger number of visual merchandising tools are available to him to evaluate the impact of his stacking options. The SPACEMAN Store Suit from AC Neilsen and ModaCAD are example of products helping in modeling a retail store design.

• Potential For Investment: The total estimated Investment Opportunity in the retail sector is around US$ 5-6 Billion in the Next five years.
  
  
• Location: with modern retail formats having made their foray into the top cities namely Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi, Nagpur there exists tremendous potential in two tier towns over the next 5 years.

• Sectors with High Growth Potential: Certain segments that promise a high growth are
  
  • Food and Grocery
    
  • Clothing
    
  • Furniture and Fixtures
    
  • Pharmacy
    
  • Durables, Footwear & Leather, Watch & Jewellery

• Fastest Growing Formats: Some of the formats that offer good growth potential are:
  
  • Speciality and Super Market
    
  • Hyper Market
    
  • Discount stores
    
  • Department Stores
    
  • Convenience Stores and E-Retailing

• Supply Chain Infrastructure: Supply chain infrastructure in terms of cold chain and Logistics.

• Rural Retail: Retail sector offers opportunities for exploration and investment in rural areas, with Corporates and Entrepreneurs having made a foray in the past. India's largely rural population has caught the eye of retailers looking for new areas of growth. ITC launched the country's first rural mall ' Chaupal Sagar', offering a diverse product range from FMCG to electronics appliance to automobiles, attempting to provide farmers a one-stop destination for all of their needs. There has been yet another initiative by the DCM Sriram Group called the ' Hariyali Bazaar', that has initially started off by providing farm related inputs and services but plans to introduce the complete shopping basket in due course. Other corporate bodies include Escorts and Tata Chemicals (with Tata Kisan Sansar) setting up agri-stores to provide products/services targeted at the farmer in order to tap the vast rural market.

• Wholesale Trading: wholesale trading also holds huge potential for growth. German giant Metro AG and South African Shoprite Holdings have already made headway in this segment by setting up stores selling merchandise on a wholesale basis in Bangalore and Mumbai respectively. These new-format cash-and-carry stores attract large volumes from a sizeable number of retailers who do not have to maintain relationships with multiple suppliers for all their needs.

• Cheap Consumer Credit

Major Formats of In-Store Retailing

Indian Retail- expanding the number of formats

In modern retailing, a key strategic choice is the format. Innovation in formats can provide an edge to retailers. Organized retailers in India are trying a variety of formats, ranging from discount stores to supermarkets to hypermarkets to specialty chains.

Formats Adopted by Key Players in India

Road Ahead; Plans of Large Retailers

• Reliance Retail: investing Rs. 30,000 crore ($6.67 billion) in setting up multiple retail formats with expected sales of Rs. 90,000 crore plus ($20 billion) by 2009-10.
  
• Pantaloon Retail: Will occupy 10 mn sq.ft retail space and achieve Rs.9,000 crore-plus ($2 bn) sales by 2008.
  
• RPG: Planning IPO, will have 450-plus Music World, 50-plus Spencer's Hyper covering 4 mn sq.ft by 2010.
  
• LIFESTYLE :Investing Rs.400 crore-plus ($90 mn) in next five years on Max Hypermarkets & value retail stores, home and lifestyle centres.
  
• Raheja's: Operates Shoppers' Stop, Crossword, Inorbit Mall, and 'Home Stop' formats. Will operate 55 "Hypercity" hypermarkets with US$100 million sales across India by 2015.
  
• Piramyd Retail: Aiming to occupy 1.75 million sq.ft retail space through 150 stores in next five years.
  
• TATA (Trent Ltd.): Trent to open 27 more stores across its retail formats adding 1 mn sq.ft of space in the next 12 DLF malls. Titan industries to add 50-plus Titan and Tanishq stores in 2006.

• Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to the extent of 100 per cent in Cash and Carry Wholesale formats. Franchisee arrangements are also permitted in retail trade.
  
• Single Brand Products: FDI upto 51 per cent is permissible in the retail trade of single brand products subject to the following conditions.
  
  
  • Products to be sold should be of a 'Single Brand' only.
    
  • Products should be sold under the same brand internationally.
    
  • 'Single Brand' product retailing would cover only products, which are branded during manufacturing.