Organised retail in India is around 10 years old. In the beginning it benefitted due to the novelty factor. However, players in the category soon realised that consumers had evolved and were now reshaping retail.
The Challenge
Big Bazaar began with the thought of recreating the bazaar culture in 2001 and has come a long way since then. In this over Rs 20 lakh crore industry, only six per cent is organised. The greatest challenge is to connect with consumers and shape the trade according to their needs.
The Strategy
For Big Bazaar, listening to consumers and observing them has been the way of understanding the behaviour and habits of customers. It is on these observations that many of the strategies are based.
The Implementation
At Big Bazaar, the team realised after speaking to consumers that the state of mind of consumers is very different on the first of every month. The retail player thus came up with the concept of “pehli tarikh”. As it was realised that on the first day of every month, people are ready to spend more , are more refreshed and relaxed, various offers and heavy discounts were provided on the first of every month. This helped Big Bazaar expand its market.
The player witnessed disproportionate penetration of products. The strategy worked well with consumers. Big Bazaar was able to sell around 1,000 pressure cookers in a certain market and 3,000 mobile phones in another.
The consumer wanted the retail player to build a ritual and a periodicity. By acting upon the consumer insight, Big Bazaar provided them exactly that.
The player also realised that with changing times, the consumer was becoming more demanding. She now wanted to be heard and it was thus important to address her needs. She was not used to hearing ‘no’ anymore. Even
when consumers wanted the ambience of a bazaar, they wanted the basics of hygiene and cleanliness. In every aspect, consumers were telling the player what to do.
Sadashiv Nayak, Joint CEO, Future Value Retail
An extension of this insight also made the player realise that it was necessary to customise the provisions for consumers. It was felt that housewives nowadays want to reduce negative labour. Also, due to shortage of time, people want to get work such as cutting of vegetables and grinding done from outside. Thus Big Bazaar came up with the concept of having a ‘chakki’ in store, where one could get freshly-ground flour. People could also get their vegetables cut and their coffee freshly ground.
The player also drew its attention towards consumers’ pain points. As standing in the queue for trying clothes was becoming a reason for consumers not trying clothes, Big Bazaar took into account another consumer insight which is locally applicable in many garment showrooms. The shopkeepers usually lure consumers into buying clothes by saying that looking at clothes does not require money. Taking a cue from here, Big Bazaar started a campaign of rewarding people for trying clothes. Trying clothes enabled people to get heavy discounts. The result was that people ended up buying two-three clothes in one go. This was a win-win situation for consumers and retailers alike.
Regionalisation was another strategy that Big Bazaar took up to customise its offerings. In different markets like Kolkata and Bengaluru, the player looked into the customs and habits that consumers followed and thus developed marketing strategies around them. It was observed that Bengaluru as a market is behaving like China where 28 per cent of retail is modernised. Everyday, a new hypermarket opens. To deal with competition and connect better with consumers, Big Bazaar mapped the different communities that were there in Bengaluru – the Telugu, Marwari, Keralite communities were few of them. The communication attempts were specific to these communities.
One of such initiatives was that of ‘rangoli’ making. A ‘rangoli’ was drawn in front of around 50,000 homes and that announced the launch of Big Bazaar in Bengaluru. In Kolkata, the retail player utilised the ‘pujo’ time to advertise and connect with the audience. Sadashiv Nayak, Joint-CEO, Future Value Retail, says, “We do depend on SEC A, B, C from the media perspective, but a lot of time we depend on gut feel as to what will work with a community.”
Big Bazaar also attempted to encash on the consumer habit of selling ‘raddi’. In exchange for ‘raddi’, consumers could avail discounts on various products in the store. Along with this concept, the idea of Wednesday Bazaar has also become a huge success. Big Bazaar realised that it was becoming difficult to manage the crowd on weekends. It thus started the Wednesday Bazaar where fruits and vegetables were available at lower prices. The result was that out of 220 stores, in around 110 stores, Wednesdays were larger then Saturdays in shopping and in around 50-55 stores, Wednesdays were largest in terms of shopping.
Another characteristic that is intrinsic to Big Bazaar’s strategy is taking risks. While some risks like the player’s association with Bollywood film Drona failed, that of introducing a buying festival during ‘Aadi’ – an equivalent of the Shraadh period in North India – in Chennai succeeded. ‘Aadi’ like ‘Shraadh’ is considered an inauspicious period for buying new things. However, Big Bazaar introduced new categories during this time and it became the largest selling periods for Big Bazaar.
The positioning of Big Bazaar until now was ‘Sasta Aur Acha’. It has now come up with the new tagline of ‘Naye India ka Bazaar’. Big Bazaar realised that even if the product is expensive, the customer is ready to pay the price if the retailer is able to understand how to position and place it. It thus came up with the concept of fruit festival. For example, it initiated the Strawberry Festival, which became a huge success. This was because, in a lot of markets, strawberries did not even reach consumers due to supply chain constraints. Big Bazaar broke that gap.
Results
The retail player has been able to strike a chord with the Indian audience and has been able to carve a niche for itself in the Indian retail sector. It has maintained its position of being the number one organised retailer in the country. Its marketing innovations have enabled the growth of not just Big Bazaar but the entire organised retail sector.
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