A Field Study on Opportunities and Challenges Faced by Organized Retailers in Tri-CityA Field Study on Opportunities and Challenges Faced by Organized Retailers in Tri-City

Abstract

Retailing involves understanding customers, their needs and expectations. Satisfying customer's expectations while maintaining wafer-thin margins is heroic task for most of the retailers. Indian retail is still in the infancy stage, with the retail revolution and there are a number of challenge factors which need to be overcome and a number of opportunity factors which need to be leveraged upon, if organized retailing is to flourish the way it ideally should. This field study is done for identifying the opportunities and challenges faced by organized retailers in the tri-city (Chandigarh - Panchkula - Mohali) region. The result of the study reveals that competition from the unorganized sector is the biggest challenge for organized retailers. Other challenges facing the organized retailers are inefficiency of distribution channels, internal logistical problem and retail shrinkage. It was also found that organized retailers see growing middle class as their greatest opportunity followed by large number of earning youth customers. The tri-city region has people from all over India, proportionate increase in spending with earnings and India's booming economy. Thus, the study found that the major challenges as well as opportunities of organized and unorganized retail are almost the same. This means that mitigating the challenges and leveraging on the opportunities could benefit both sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]