A study of business practices adopted by supermarket on buying behaviour with special reference to selected supermarkets in Pune city

Abstract

Retail is the final stage of any economic activity. Retailing includes all the activities involved in selling goods or services to final consumers for personal, non-business use. Any organization selling to final consumers whether it is a manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer- is doing retailing. By virtue of this fact, retail occupies an important place in the world economy. The Indian retail industry remained a large unorganized sector till the eighties. Corporate houses like Aditya Birla Group, Pantaloon, Reliance entered into retailing after recognizing the vast potential of this sector. The retail industry in India has even been attracting major manufacturing firms and the retail industry is poised to grow at 28% per annum over next five year period. A Global Retail Development Index developed by A. T. Kearney has ranked India as the third, among the top 30 emerging markets in the world. With a contribution of 10% to the national GDP and employing 8% of the total workforce (only agriculture employs more) in the country, the retail industry has emerged as one of the main pillars of the Indian economy. Now, in order to excel in the marketplace, retailers aim at developing strategic advantage, they need to effectively manage their critical resources, real estate and locations and above all their customers. Although the share of organized retail in India is low as compared to other countries, its share has been consistently increasing over the years. The growth rate of organized retail in almost all categories like clothing, textiles & fashion accessories, jewellery, watches, footwear, health & beauty care, catering, entertainment has been higher than unorganized retail. In organized retail sector, clothing and fashion accessories is the largest category with 38.1 percent of market share valued at Rs. 29,000 crores, followed by food & grocery accounting for 11.5 percent of the organized retail market at Rs. 9,000 crores. Footwear with 9.9 percent of the organized marketshare at Rs. 7,750 crores. The mobile & accessories retail market has shown the fastest growth in 2007 (25.6%) over the previous year, the other two prominent categories being catering services where growth was 25.1 percent and books, music & gifts category which achieved 23.3 percent growth. The consumer landscape is changing very fast. Occupational changes and expansion & penetration of media have caused a significant change in the way the consumer lives and spends his money. Consumers today see an exciting explosion of choices, new categories and new shopping options and have increasing disposable income to fulfill their aspirations. They are seeking more information to make these choices. Consumers are increasingly seeking convenience in shopping and want the shopping experience to be enjoyable. Shopping is no longer seen a mundane chore, but it is now more exciting and keeps the prospect engaged. There are different formats of retail and one of the booming business formats of retail is Supermarkets.