In a recent “While You Were Out” column in the FORTUNE magazine, Stanley Bing says, “I put up with a lot of things on the job, like working. In return, I expect air-conditioning”.
Likewise, I put up with a lot of things with organized retail, like parking problems, and all I ask in return is air-conditioning. However, during my visits to these places in the last couple of months, I’ve almost always noticed the air-conditioning to be switched off. While this is probably a part of cost-cutting measures adopted by mall developers and retailers on the back of the recent recession, it seriously mucks up the shopping experience. Instead of encouraging people to spend more time browsing for goods and stoking unplanned purchases, the stuffy environment in these places is guaranteed to make shoppers split the scene at the earliest.
Over a year ago, I’d written about how Indian organized retail had lost Round 1 of the retail battle to kirana stores, which are the Indian version of mom-and-pop stores.
Unless it recognizes that better shopping experience is one of its USPs as compared to dingy and cramped kirana stores and does something to preserve it, the organized retail industry risks losing the next round as well.