Retail assignment final
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The document summarizes an audit of a Westside retail store near E square mall. It analyzes the store's product categories, placement, pricing strategies, promotional strategies, store atmosphere, employee service, and customer service. Key findings include that the store sells a wide range of products including clothing, home goods, and food. Products are organized by category, brand, size and price on the ground and first floors. Pricing includes discounts, sales, and bundling. The store aims to create a pleasant shopping experience through layout, displays, music and scents. Employees were found to be knowledgeable, helpful and courteous. Customer service at billing counters was efficient with no long wait times.
Retail assignment final
- 1. RETAIL MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT Retail Store Audit: Westside (Near E square) Submitted to: Submitted by: Dr. Komal Chopra Abhishek Prasad, F-03 Amandeep Singh, F-06 Saurabh Solanki, F-23 Gaurav Dixit, E-15 Tanya Sud, E-55 1
- 2. Product Analysis In Westside Retail Store near E-square mall we conducted our study. The company has about eight product categories below its belt. These have majorly in-house brand displays, with other brands also being tied-up in their marketing mix. Below are some of its typical products: • Kid’s wear • Daily necessities • Men’s wear & accessories • Footwear • Women’s wear & accessories • Gift items • Crockery & Kitchen Items • Interior Decoration • Furniture • Branded Jewelry Products divided into Products are being categorized into: • Ladies Wear, Men Wear, Kids Wear • Casual, Formal and Traditional • Sizes Clothes Category: On Entrance of the retail store, there was a display of mannequins that exhibit presence of both casual and formal wears in male, female and kid’s category. While displaying products under different categories, the available space was divided in such a way that fresh products are giving focused light towards the wall with proper shelves spaces whereas on sale products are on hanger or stand display occupying the floor spacing. On top of each shelf there is prominent and widely visible Brand Name for easy visualization. On every shelf the clothes were displayed in ascending order of sizes. They make sure that products are arranged in ascending order of prices, discounts and sizes. 2
- 3. Now products for men and woman are depicted in such a way that firstly grouped in Casual, Formal and festival dresses, and then each brand is given separate space along the wall. Home Furniture: Furniture & home décor were placed on corner of the showroom. Glass wares and crockery like breakable glass products are deliberately placed at considerable height to keep it safe and away from the kids. Adjacent to home décor there is toy section in which products are placed at different height based on kids height and packaging sizes. Food & Cosmetics Near the billing counter there is Food and cosmetic section at one side of the whole Westside. Jams, Pickles and small packages are placed on the visibility height. Heavy packing of food items are placed at the bottom. Besides the main billing counter, within this Food section there is two separate small weight measurement and billing counter. Hereby there is display of perishable items with the help of open refrigerators with a separation between Veg and Non-Veg items. Near the billing counter there is standing display of accessories for man, woman and kids like belts, tie, napkins, key rings, ear rings, bracelets etc. Product categories on ground floor, 1st floor, etc and the reason for this placement Ground floor: • Woman wear, • Cosmetics, • Food, and Grocery items First Floor: • Men’s and kids wear, • Toys, • Home décor and furniture • Accessories 3
- 4. Woman are meander through sprawling clothing and accessory collections or detour. They are more shopaholic, and need convenience to buy. Even if they want to buy for their kids and husband, they like to glide up the escalator and they want to explore whole ground floor of the woman section, home furniture etc. Whereas men as a buyer are out to buy a targeted item and flee the store as quickly as possible. There’s a famous saying that goes,” Men buy, Women Shop”. Location of private labels (in-house brands) Westside prominently selling their own brands and so gives them uniform priority while allocating space and location. Suggestion: Seating facility should be given for giving more convenience to customer. Pricing Analysis Pricing decision consistent with firm’s marketing strategy and target market. They believe in democratizing their service and charging fair price. Offers value for money propositions for consumer, especially by offering their own brands which helps to augment their sales margin. In recent past, a lot of variation in the products was made. It aimed to all category of the customer. Types of pricing • Promotional discounts • Seasonal Pricing • Image Pricing • Product form pricing • Psychological Pricing • Product bundling Pricing • Value Pricing 4
- 5. *Source: http://www.marketing91.com/marketing-mix-westside/ Promotional strategy analysis • Westside is very fond of enticing customers with discounts, some of which can run up to 50% the marked price. The company also does a lot of in-house brand promotions, with space availability for some formidable international labels. • Westside is also fond of tying up with some of the renowned and reputed designers. This gives customers more confidence to do business with Westside. There is also the use of membership cards specifically their Club west card membership that is used for customer retention. • The company uses theme-based stores such as Westside Woman that is located in Shalimar Bagh. • In addition to all these, Westside does run advertisement campaigns. • The company is credited for increasing its customer base through the addition of international brands within its basket. These include Vera Moda products, U.S. Polo ASSN and Chicco among others. 5
- 6. Suggestions: Discounts on Cosmetics possibly. Store Atmospherics Westside usually follows straight rectangular layout all over India which create balance between sales and shopping spaces. The layout is designed in such a way to entice customers to move around the store to purchase more merchandise than they have originally planned. • Both Entrance and Exit are on the ground floor, where we have collection for Cosmetic, Jewelery, Watches, Bags and other accessories along with woman and kids section. • In this Spine layout, household items are on the first floor along with men section containing casual wear, formal wear, ethnic wear, and shoe segment. • Visual merchandising: All categories of clothes displayed and hence the consumption of space for shelves is reduced. • Fire exit is on the opposite side of the main entrance gate on both floor connected by stairs and supported by signage. • Billing counter is on both floors exactly one above the other as shown in attached map. 6
- 7. • Cleanliness was up to the mark as expected Ambience of the store • Store is equipped with well-designed interiors, sprawling spaces and centrally air conditioned AC ambience. • Use of flamboyant colors and vibrant displays imparts useful and energetic effect. • Use of electronic media it intensify the effect. • Festive looks festive seasons • In the background English music is supporting shopping ambience at low voice. • Aroma was pleasant as per the merchandise. Mode of providing information in the store (signage, announcements, etc) • There is no promotion in form of speaker announcement. Signage and small boards are used to attract customer to pay using Credit cards and Loyalty cards. • Direction boards are used to inform customer about category of products for different category of customer. • There is hangout indicating the directions for kids, man and woman section. • In food and beverages section, specifically mentioned the Veg-Non veg category. • Layout map is placed on the Pillar at the center of both floor for easy fire exit and navigation for giving direction. • Discount Boards and loyalty program is mentioned at entrance and near billing counter. Does the store provide complete information relating to promotional schemes, store policy regarding return of sold goods, working hours, etc? No, only promotional scheme to boost sales and loyalty programs are depicted in form of hanging signage. There was no clearly indication about working hours or return of goods policy but they have mentioned about price discounts on top of every product group like 699/- etc 7
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- 9. Employee Analysis Are the employees in uniform? Yes they are properly dressed as per their role and functions for example Cosmetic sales person and food item selling person is wearing different uniforms as per the requirement, whereas Security and 3rd party service providers having totally different dress. Are the employees neatly dressed? Yes they were wearing neat and tidy dress. Are the employees courteous and helpful? Yes they were greeting the customer at very first sight. They were clarifying customer’s queries and confusion politely with a smile. Also they were proactively approaching the confusing customers. Are the employees knowledgeable? Yes they were trained in fields but only specialized in the assigned category. Customer Service Analysis Does the customer spend too much time at the billing counter? No, since they were serviced with adequate no. of billing counters on both floors thus dividing the queuing efficiently. There were separate billing and measuring counters for the food and confectionary category. Suggestion: The amount of billing counter they have is good enough for weekdays, but on weekends, the crowd is more and it could get chaotic. They can make an additional billing counter which gets operational when there’s more footfall. Are you satisfied with the handling of queries by salesmen? Yes, every sales promoter was very well trained about every product they selling. 9
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