Reflections

I closed the previous article {found here : Understanding The Internet : Reaching Into The Gut Of Existing Systems } with a statement that few organizations truly understand how to use the 5-21” space of the screen;  this article looks at this aspect in a little more detail. A great many companies use the customer-facing aspects of the internet as merely another tool to communicate and connect, completely ignoring the full power of the internet ecosystem. The Screen, first of all, is mistakenly defined as just a mere device that displays, or acts as a window, disseminating information to your prospects and customers, and the general audience. The screen is more of a doorway, a portal that transports – or has the ability to – transport your customer into a world of constantly interacting stakeholders in your product, your company and your addressable market segment. If that doesn’t scare you as a Brand Manager, as a Marketer, and as a Sales Professional, high time it did. ...

A summary of my posts on Retail FDI - presenting a complete analysis Seeing as there is a lot of opinion floating around, let us take a look at some hard core statistics of this trade, as well as current research which  proves quite conclusively that this is just a political brouhaha, and that there is no danger to the Mom-n-Pop store format in India.  "I had occasion to visit the market today to stock up on provisions, and I decided to cross-check my personal hypothesis by talking to a Reliance Fresh Outlet and a couple of my regular Kirana Stores. These are almost next door to me, and more importantly, are less than 100 yards from an EasyDay Superstore The Kirana Owner was pretty candid in his analysis. He said "Dhanda kam hone kaa to sawaal hi paida nahi hota sir. Peheli baat to har cheez ke daam badh rahein hain, doosri baat hum graahak ke baju mein hi baithhe hain. Pichhle teen saal mein humaaraa dhandaa to badhaa hi hai, ghataa nahi. Itnaa zaroor ...

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/suparna-karmakar-fdi-in-retail-is-much-ado-about-nothing/496750/ Date: 25th December It gladdens the heart to see optimism and good sense beginning to prevail over this non-issue; the latest article on this matter has yet again revisited, and added to, earlier papers on this topic, which is worth a mention. " Research on impact of retail sector regulations by the author for a CUTS international report on Competition and Regulation in India, 2011 revealed that: (a) Globally, in densely populated countries like India (with consequent higher real estate prices), small-store formats thrive, and even flourish in the face of the competition from big-box retail; (b) On the other hand, the introduction of foreign competition forced manufacturers to cut costs in their supply chains and small stores become more efficient, and provide more serious competition to large-store formats and centralised operation that the multinational retai...

Rightsizing modern retail - Hindustan Times : 'via Blog this' It feels great to have confirmation of an analysis or a strategy drawn on the basis of observation and deduction... the latest article on Modern Retail confirms what I have posted on my blog earlier; that things are not all hunky-dory for the Large Format Retail outlet. As I outlined in my earlier posts: http://reflectionsvvk.blogspot.in/2012/01/organised-retail-100-fdi-storm-in.html http://reflectionsvvk.blogspot.in/2012/01/organised-retail-reality-check.html http://reflectionsvvk.blogspot.in/2012/01/category-analysis-of-organised-retail.html From the above we can conclude that: (as concluded in the Articles above) The higher strata of society will be tapped by the LFRs  There might be an initial slack in monthly sales turnover from kirana stores in the short term, especially in the vicinity of LFRs, but over the long term this will be compensated by alterations in stocking patterns, population...

I received my first online shipment yesterday - a book titled "The Monster" by Michael W Hudson. Score one for online model, you would think? Not quite - I spotted the book in a bookstore, but purchased online for a price advantage. Therefore, the flipkart site could not have realised this sale without the support of the brick-and-mortar shop. It is the regular shop that sold the book to me by virtue of its display and the facility it provides for leafing through the pages. Without this, chances are I would not have purchased this book at all!  Further, I had occasion to visit crossroads book store, where I spotted 3 lovely books - The Scam, The 2G Spectrum Scam and Building Brand India. In the first 2 titles, I get a 10-20% saving over the traditional model. In fact, on browsing a little more, I noticed price-offs upto 35% in quite a large number of titles. If you look at this transaction, yet again the initial sale has been created by the traditional model - and it...

ICRIER Report on Organised Retail:  http://www.icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper222.pdf Knight Frank Report:  http://my.knightfrank.com/research-reports/india-retail-market.aspx   I have been arguing in my writings that the threat to kirana stores in India does not exist, and that the 2 can co-exist.... interested parties may refer the above researches that have been conducted in India circa 2008 & 2010. I admit that these are a bit dated, and might need to be re-validated. However, I have not observed any difference in any of the cities in which I have made queries and observations; the trend seems to be the same as before. Not one of the small retailers I have spoken to in any city has told me of a decline in business volume or profit. The key finding of the report are encapsulated below: 1) An initial fall of 23% in terms of volume. This loss is made up in the subsequent years 2) No evidence of a decline in overall employment in the organised sector ...

Online Retail... frankly, only a few months ago I would very likely have thought of it in utter disdain - not for India; long way off; etc etc etc... One fine day, I got a mail in my inbox - A voucher offering 2 mocktails at Barista @ 99/- (or some such); Pay Cash On Delivery . I was surprised, and frankly tempted- COD. No security issues, I thought. Unfortunately, I still did not make the connection, and put it out of my mind as a sales promotional effort undertaken by the host organisation. Well, as it turns out, gmail (or any other mail for that matter) had other ideas, it seemed. A few mails from other such examples later, I cottoned onto an online site stating Pay Cash On Delivery! Hold on a minute, I thought. What's going on? To my mind, and to be honest - to most other people's mind, the biggest stumbling blocks to increased penetration of online retail in India lay in the low penetration of Credit Cards / Debit Cards, Low Consumer Awareness, Resistance toward...