*Visaka Engineering College, Visakhapatnam
Online published on 7 January, 2012.
The Indian retail sector is going through a transformation and this emerging market is witnessing a significant change in its growth and investment pattern. Both existing and new players are experimenting with new retail formats. Currently two popular formats hypermarkets and supermarkets are growing at a rapid pace. Apart from the brick -mortar formats, brick -click and click-click formats are also increasingly functional on the Indian retail landscape. Consumer dynamics in India is also changing and the retailers need to take note of this and formulate their strategies and tactics to deliver the exact expected value to the customer. Development of mega malls in India is adding new dimensions to the booming retail sector. There is significant development in retail landscape not only in the metros but also in the smaller cities.
In the backdrop of all these developments the investigator makes an attempt to explain the emerging trends in the development of Modern Retail formats in Indian context and highlights the emerging Rural Retail Landscape and also reveals the Consumer Shopping Behavior among the Modern Retail Formats with special reference to Visakhapatnam City. In order to fulfill the objectives of the study, primary as well as secondary data have been collected to analyze the trends in modern retail formats meticulously. To analyze the emerging trends in shoppers’ behavior 216 Retail Shoppers from 6 Retail Outlets operating in Visakhapatnam were interviewed during June- August 2010. Secondary data published by different research institutions like Tata Strategic Management Group, Center for the Study of Social Organization, Future Group, National Council for Applied Economic Research, AT Kearney etc have been considered to draw the key inferences.
