A Comparative Study of Store Image of Organized Retailers in Mumbai

A Comparative Study of Store Image of Organized

Retailers in Mumbai

Aniket Banerjee , Soham Mukherjee , Souvik Das

Vijay Tandon (Program Director, PGDM, UBS)

Post Graduate Diploma in Management

Universal Business School, Karjat

Introduction

Store Image is a mixture of tangible and intangible dimensions and interplay of these tangible and intangible elements and customers overall interpretation of them, based upon previous knowledge and experiences, are widely accepted to determine store image. Martinaeau’s (1958) paper identified for core attributes layout and architecture, symbols and colors advertising in sales personnel. These attributes are merchandise including factors such as quality ,assortment ,styling or fashion, guarantees and price, service encompassing staff service, ease of return, credit and delivery services and physical facilities such as layout and architecture.

Retailers operate in a competitive environment facing changes in customer’s needs, demographics, type of retailing and type of technology. For each retail store, a different image may exist in consumers’ minds. This is based on the different elements of the retail mix. The merchandise of retailer is its most important retail mix element according to Ghosh (1990). A retailer has to make sure that he/she offers those products to his/her customers that they expect him/her to offer.

This research will undertake organized retailers means those licensed retailers who are registered for taxes. This includes the retail chains and also the privately owned large retail businesses. A comparative study will be undertaken of the store image of the organized retailers in Mumbai like Easy Day, Reliance Fresh and Big Bazaar dealing in grocery. The strategy for these organized retailers can be improved if they are adding new product lines and brands, better displays, introduction of self service and enhancing the store ambience.

So, Food and Grocery Retail is by far the most promising area for the corporate majors to get into the organized retail business. In addition to the high growth rate in the organized retail in the recent times, the store format choice becomes an area of concern for a retailer as well as consumer.

The attitude of customers is also rapidly changing towards organized market retail stores mainly due to increased income levels, strong economy, changing life styles and shopping habits of customers. It is also observed that grocery retail consumers have adopted various task definition and risk reduction strategies in evaluating the choice of store format. Hence, there is a need to examine that how far these store image elements like task definition, perceived risk, physical surroundings, temporal aspects and social surroundings  affecting  retail  format  choice  behaviour  in  relation  to   neighbourhood  kirana  stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets in Indian food and grocery retailing. The multiple discriminant analysis statistical technique is used to find the significant predictors and their discriminating effect on retail format choice behaviour.