Mrs Khanna’s London holiday and the lessons for retailers in India

Mrs Khanna’s London holiday and the lessons for retailers in India

K Radhakrishnan

Mrs Khanna has just returned with her family from a ten-day holiday in the UK. The Delhi-based homemaker had been to her sister’s in Huntington, suburban London. Throughout the trip, Mrs Khanna, the quality-conscious, open-minded shopper that she is, would insist on visiting various outlets of supermarket chains. Could not have enjoyed the holiday any better, she says. She is certain her London-based sister enjoys a better standard of living, thanks to some simple ways that retailers there adopt to make shopping useful, convenient and stress-free. To start with, Mrs Khanna’s young son, 9, got in London what he had been missing all his life. He has milk-specific lactose intolerance but is fine with yoghurt. He found 29 different varieties of yoghurt. He just feasted on multiple flavours with varying fat content. Mrs Khanna found signage in the supermarkets informative. For instance, thanks to signage, she learnt aout yoghurt made from milk of cattle reared on natural fodder. Why, she thought, could this product not be available in India? Is the Indian consumer not ready for the product? Most unlikely. She knew that in Delhi and other metros, consumers would lap it up. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Aggregated sales in yoghurt would be insufficient to entice any manufacturer to set up a large factory. Sure, demand exists in each home. But many questions arise. Who, in the form of a large supermarket, is to aggregate the demand? Even if there were a well-equipped supermarket, milk is always in short supply in summers in India. Should there be adequate supply, would the retailer buy state-of-the-art chillers to maintain the quality of yoghurt? How minutely can Indian retailers understand the consumers to be able to adapt a category in store to influence the consumer? How well is the store staff trained to display appropriate signage? Do they have the right paraphernalia to display signage or will they simply use adhesive tape to stick the signage on the wall? Will retailers switch off the chillers at night? If yes, won’t the yoghurt spoil? During her holiday, Mrs Khanna could find all sorts of safe foods and beverages - rice, pulses, jams, condiments, you name it — for her diabetic husband. Again, in-store signage was a big help. Come to think of it, India is home to a large number of diabetics. She wished Indian supermarkets offered similar options for diabetics. Mr Khanna would probably be healthier and a lot less grumpy. To be fair, retailers in India did attempt to encourage vendors to manufacture or import products for diabetic consumers. But the supplies have always been inconsistent. Shelves earmarked for diabetic foods have remained empty. Even rice for diabetics is not available at all supermarkets. Be that as it may. Mrs Khanna was delighted to find an amazing range of hair-colour products at London’s retailers. Each variant had a thick strand of hair coloured in it. She could feel the hair and see actually how it would look in that particular colour. Similarly, in the lighting section, she saw glowing bulbs that indicated to her the amount of brightness in each category (20W, 100W, so on). Is all this difficult to do in India? Or is it that FMCG companies don’t have the will to do what the retailer is asking for? Or is it that the retailer is not focused on categories of products, but instead merely wants promotional events at the next weekend? It looks as though retailers have identified the consumer’s needs in various categories. But FMCG companies, whether Indian or multinational, have not been able to provide solutions. To be sure, category management in India is very nascent. Retailers employ buyer-managers, not category-managers. What transforms a buyer-manager into a category-manager is the ability to understand the evolving needs, buying patterns and habits of the consumer. What is crucial is the ability to source products category-wise to meet the consumer’s demand, arrange them neatly on the shop floor, display appropriate signage and build a supply chain for fresh merchandise. For example, failure to develop a temperature-controlled supply chain has deprived the Indian consumer of good chocolates. Instead, confectioners found it easier to reformulate and make hard, biscuit-like chocolates that don’t melt in Indian conditions. That way, they don’t even have to advertise the goodness of chocolates that melt, a new category for the Indian consumer. It is evident that understanding categories is of paramount importance. Retailers and manufactures should get together to meet the needs of London-returned Mrs Khanna. She is ready with her list of value-added products. By the way, they can offer high margins to the retailer. The writer is a veteran retail professional and a sector expert. He can be reached at radha.krishnan@alignedbp.com