RELATIONSHIP RETAILING WITH REFERENCE TO SHOPPER’S STOP

By

Ms. Ruchika Jeswal

Faculty, IMS Ghaziabad.

Retailing is suddenly a new buzz word, spreading and making its presence felt in different parts of the country. With the largest young population in the world over 890 million people below 45 years of age, India is a resplendent market. As the economy grows so does the Indian middle class. Demographics dynamics is just one of the factors resulting in boom in retailing there are several other reasons as well:

1)      Double incomes: Increasing instances of Double Incomes in most of the families coupled with rise in spending power.

2)      Plastic revolution: Increasing use of credit cards for categories relating to Apparel, Consumer Durable Goods, Food and Grocery etc.

3)      Urbanization: Increased urbanization has led to higher customer density areas thus enabling retailers to use lesser number of stores to target the same number of customers

4)  Improved Transportation: overall improvement in transportation helps a customer        to travel miles to reach a particular shop.

Despite all this the Indian Consumer is seeking to have more value from the products it buys or stores it visits. Marketing is no longer about developing, selling and delivering products. It is increasingly more concerned with the development and maintenance of mutually satisfying long term relationship with customers and this is known as Relationship retailing.

Relationship retailing is when retailers seek to establish and maintain long term bonds with customers, rather than act as if each sales transaction is a completely new encounter.

SHOPPER’S STOP

The foundation of Shopper’s Stop was laid down on October 27, 1991 by the K. Raheja Corp. group of companies. Being amongst India’s biggest hospitality and real estate player, the group crossed another milestone with its lifestyle venture – SHOPPER’S STOP. It is not simply a single brand shop but a Fashion and life style store for the family. Today, Shopper’s stop is a house hold name, known for its superior quality products, services and also for providing a complete shopping experience. It has become the highest benchmark for Indian retail industry No other company can be a better example for studying Relationship Retailing.

For relationship retailing to work, long term value driven relationship are needed with other channel members as well as with customers. And both these jobs are quite a challenging task. It is usually seen in most of the businesses work on Pareto’s Principle that 20% of the customers represent 80% of the sales. In Relationship Retailing, there are four factors to keep in mind: the customer base, customer service, customer satisfaction and loyalty programs and defection rates:

1) CUSTOMER BASE - It is the group of current clients and consumers that a business serves. Retailers must regularly analyze their customer base in terms of population and life-style trends, attitudes towards and reasons for shopping, the level of loyalty and the mix of new versus loyal customers.

The Indian population is getting younger .More than half of the population is between the ages of 18- 25 years. India is emerging as a major destination for the BPO and call centres. There has been a rising affluence among the middle class Indian society. There has been a rise in the number of dual income nuclear families .gender roles are changing .shopper’s demand more, market segments are becoming more diverse; there is less interest in shopping and time – saving goods and services are desirable. It is worth nurturing relationship with some of the shopper’s than with others, they are the retailer’s core customer- its best customers. These changing patterns are broadly understood at Shoppers Stop and that can be seen in the wide variety of products ranging from ethnic to western to indo-western outfits offered to the customers.

2) CUSTOMER SERVICE - According to Turban et al, 2002 “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.”

Customer service refers to the identifiable, but sometimes intangible, activities undertaken by a retailer in conjunction with the goods and service it sells. Retailers should try to offer both expected and augmented Customer service. Expected customer service is the service level that customers want to receive from any retailer, such as basic employee courtesy .Augmented customer service includes the activities that enhance the shopping experience and give retailers a competitive advantage. The attributes of the personnel who interact with customers (such as politeness and knowledge), as well as the number and variety of customer service are extra elements, using these enhances its competitive standing. Examples at Shoppers Stop are free parking for card holders, gift wrapping, etc.     

3) CUSTOMER SATISFACTION - Customer satisfaction occurs when the value and customer service provided through a retailing experience meet or exceed customer expectations .If the expectations of value and customer service are not met ,the customer will be dissatisfied .Only very satisfied customers are likely to remain loyal in the long run .Mostly customers donor complain when they are dissatisfied .They just shop elsewhere .To obtain more feedback ,retailers must make it easier for shoppers to complain ,make sure shoppers believe their concerns are being addressed and sponsor ongoing customer satisfaction surveys .It is seen that customer satisfaction is directly proportional to employee satisfaction. At Shoppers' Stop outlets with higher employee satisfaction ratings, customer surveys correspondingly indicated greater customer commitment. At these stores, enhanced customer commitment translated into more customer visits.

4) LOYALTY PROGRAM - Consumer loyalty programs reward a retailer’s best customer, those with whom it wants long lasting relationship. Good customer loyalty programs rewards are useful and appealing and they are attainable in a reasonable time. Rewards stimulate both short and long run purchases .customer communications are personalized. Shopper’s Stop customer loyalty program is called the first citizen. The program offers its members an opportunity to collect points and avail of innumerable special benefits. Currently, Shopper’s Stop has a database of over 2.5 lakh members who contribute to nearly 50% of the total sales of Shopper’s Stop.

CONCLUSION

Relationship retailing is all about maintaining along term relationship with the customers. Shoppers Stop is providing not only high quality products but also superior customer service. It is offering more value to customers by its First citizen program. Citibank and Shopper’s Stop have launched India’s first Retail Co-branded card with MasterCard. The loyal customers of Shoppers stop will be able to translate their credit card spends across all categories into incremental free shopping at shopper’s stop. They can also seek an exhaustive range of consumers’ financial products and services at Citibank financial centre at all shopper’s stop locations .Shopper’s stop is thus offering unsurpassed benefits through this type of schemes.