business

Courteous staff can make shoppers stick around

Two weeks ago, a friend of mine in the consulting business invited me to attend an event on customer experience. His company was presenting its new set of framework, CINDEXDS and CINDEXBQ – which basically quantify the level of delight customers feel for a particular brand and also measures a bottom quartile score that indicates

business

Olympics eye-opener for retail practices

About a year ago, I had made up my mind to attend the Olympics in London, knowing fully well that I was going to witness a great sporting spectacle. But I had little idea then what an amazing retail experience it would turn out to be as well!

business

Brick & mortar to click & mortar: Convenience steers sales

Food has always been one of the largest segments of retail. As much as 42% of the Indian retail industry is dedicated to food. It holds similar market shares internationally and is also the largest growing segment. After all, we think about food at least three times a day, if not more. We wonder what

business

Add a dash of tech to retail loyalty

One of the better known hypermarkets is aggressively advertising its new partnership with a loyalty programme. It’s also offering bonus rewards. It seems a very attractive scheme and I wanted to know what sort of impact this had made on customers. So, last Friday I decided to visit one of these stores in Pune. There

business

A personal touch to retail can work wonders for sales

Replicating similar experiences to shoppers over the Internet, however, remains a tough challenge for players Last weekend, I was in Mahabaleshwar, and on the way back, my wife realised that the trip would be incomplete without any Strawberry Cream. We had just had breakfast and were quite full, but knew we couldn’t leave without having

business

Mastering new channels for enhanced shopping experiences

Shopping has never been more exciting than it is now for the modern Indian consumer. There is a lot more to shop for, a larger choice of products and services, as well as different ways in which we can shop. We are moving away from the traditional and are looking forward to new shopping experiences.

business

Simple ways to make shopping a pleasant experience

Over the weekend, I decided to visit a few stores of different formats, looking for situations that could put me off shopping or even make me feel like never visiting those stores again. I’ve always believed that it’s much less expensive to retain existing customers than to attract new ones. Identifying negative shopping experiences is

business

‘Value-for-money’ is acquiring a new meaning

I learned the most valuable lessons in retail by spending time in stores. A great way to enhance that learning is by attending conferences. I try to attend as many as I can afford (since I never seem to get any free invites!) and my most favourite events are the NRF Annual Convention and the

business

Customer joy, not sales is the key to retail success

Most modern retailers rely on simple logic to measure their success: if sales are up, business must be doing well. What they don’t consider is, you don’t have to do much to grow in India today. Modern retail accounts for 4-5% of overall trade while the number of consumers who want to shop in this

business

Rising online shopping, and not FDI, is the real threat to traditional retail

I am a big advocate of FDI and feel that the impact of FDI in India will be much larger than just benefiting farmers or adversely affecting small traders. So, when I was told that in my last piece my views on the subject seemed ambiguous, I thought I should make them more clear. Two