Retail Marketing

1. Stores Visited – Home Center, Phoenix Marketcity Kurla

Home Town, Matunga road

2. Insights
- Both the stores are medium sized store but contains an exhaustive list of home item
categories
- The products are high involment product, customer invests more time and effort to
buy in this category , and also customer education & information becomes critical to
make a good shopping experience
- Women are the primary customers for these stores, during our visit to store – 70-90
% of the people walking in were women and mostly in their 30s
- Furniture category was situated at the end of store to enable cross selling
opportunities
- Since customer education is important, the signages to the different sections Hve to
be very clear and visible for easy navigation. In HomeCentre, Signages for different
sections were visible. However, in Hometown, the signages fir different sections
weren’t there which made customers journey in the store more tiring.
- In both the stores, the MRP was visible on each kind of product along with discount
if applicable on most of the products to make it easier for customers to make
decisions.

Figure 1 Clear Visible section signages in black displays (HomeCentre)

 Figure 2 MRP & discounts clearly visible and available even for sub items

Best Practices

- Customer education and information disposal in customer friendly manner is

essential to this category.
- Home centers have display screens to play video about information on “How to
use and where it is used” for complex products.
Figure 3 Display screens to play video about information on “How to use and where it is used” for complex products.

- Various types of infographics were also available for educating customer about the
use of everyday items displayed as below

Figure 4 Display board displaying different types of knives and their uses
 Figure 5 Display about different types of glassware and different types of painting

- Windows at store entrance is very crucial to lure customers into the store. The home
center store has display screen which plays video of different attractions and also
store efficiency is depended on space utilization. Bed section has multiple headrests
to give customer variety of beds and save space at same time
 Figure 6 Digital display window at entrance of store

Figure 7 Bedroom section

- Digital Kiosk was available to assist customers for easy navigation of available range of
products. This help customers browse through entire range and checkout accordingly.
 Figure 8 Digital Kiosk

Improvement Areas
- Women are the primary customers of the store, but there was no female employee
on the floor to help and assist the customers. Female employees may result in better
customer satisfaction and improved experience
- Trolleys were only available at the entrance in less visible section, It should be
available at multiple sections so that customer doesn’t have to come back to the
entrance
- Inconsistencies were present in the stores in terms of merchandizing, display of
discounts and few sub sections in furniture section were old which needs to be
replaced regularly
 Figure 9 Missing MRP tags

Figure 10 Inconsistency in merchandising

- It was also seen there was considerable loss of cross selling opportunities in bedroom
section due to use of non-branded accessories leading to loss of potential sales
 Figure 11 Non-branded accessories in bedroom section leading to loss in potential sales

- Place for Display advertising of the “Design and Build” section of HomeTown was just in
front of all the dining tables, where customers would stop and sit for a while to experience
the sitting and at the same time the display advertising will be in front of their eyes
attracting their attention. However, structural construction was obscuring the whole view of
the advertising diverting the customers’ attention.

Figure 11 Structural construction obscuring the view of display advertising

- Employees and Staff at HomeTown did not approach the customers for the assistance, which
can result in potential loss in cross sale opportunities.
- In HomeTown, there were certain corners where the display was not great and cardboard
packing boxes were placed unorganized. This made those areas aesthetically less appealing.
In addition, in the chairs section, all the materials were unorganized even though the lawn
type corner created was visually more appealing.

Figure 12 Unorganized inventory

- In bedroom section, Beds were without mattresses and some with flies. The maintenance
should be done during the afterhours of the stores operations.
Figure 13 Beds without mattress and presence of flies making customers turn away