Retailing is the biggest emerging private sector industry in the world; it is one of the leading drivers of economy. India is experiencing an exceptional consumption explosion. Many malls and hyper markets are opening day by day. Retail industry in India and in Chhattisgarh is going through great changes. Unorganized retail is taking shape of organized retail at a faster rate. There are many factors supporting this change like, change in income of consumers, availability of multinational brands, huge population, large number of customers belonging to the age group of 18- 55 years etc. The average consumers today are having more amount of money at their disposal, younger and more inspirational in his or her needs than ever before.

Socio- demographic changes such as increased number of dual-income, single-parent and technology-familiar households, have significantly altered shoppers’ expectations, demands and spending pattern during their traditional shopping experience(Kim,2002). A range of modern retailers are attempting to serve the need of the new Indian consumer who now value convenience and choice on a par with getting value for their hard earned money (KMPG, 2006).The globally renowned consultancy firm A. T . Kearney (2004), has rated India as the most attractive emerging retail market for three years in a row.

There are various types of retail stores and it is hard to catagorise it in any particular format. Over the years retailing has gone through many changes and experienced tough competition. All such changes are followed by retailers just to satisfy the demands of consumers. New catagories have combined which makes classification difficult (Berman &Evans, 1995). The retail industry in India is divided into organized and unorganized sector. Organized retailing refers to trading activities undertaken by licensed retailers; means registered for sales tax, income tax etc. organized retailers also includes those super markets which are supported by big corporate houses. Unorganized retailing is the conventional format of small investment retail shops….generally known as Mom and Pop stores, kirana shops, general stores etc. A report of Centre for Policy Alternatives {Guruswamy, et.al., 2005} suggests unorganised retailing is by far the prevalent form of trade in India – constituting 98% of total trade, while organized trade accounts only for the remaining 2%.

Chhattisgarh is newly formed state and is a growing child of only 13 years. Rapid development is experienced by Chhattisgarh in the development of retail trade. Since inception of Chhattisgarh as state, rapid development is observed in apparels, mobiles, electronics, groceries and furniture market. Many new Malls are opening day by day with the expansion of cities. It is observed that huge footfalls are seen in malls at the weekends. It is necessary to find out the current retail trend in Chhattisgarh. Although malls has been a noteworthy trend setter of foreign culture but very little research on malls is found in Chhattisgarh, in educational ground. Study is conducted on grocery stores located in malls. Especially those factors which influence customers to shop in malls are tried to bring up. Bilaspur city of Chhattisgarh is taken into study to carry on the research work.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

Bell, Ho and Tang (1998) found that location no longer explain most of the variance in store choice decisions. Rather store choice decisions seems to be consistent with a model where consumers optimize their total shopping costs, effort to access the store location being one component of their fixed cost of shopping. Traill (2006) analysed the rapid spread of supermarkets in developing and middle-income countries and forecasted its continuation. Today, suburban sprawl, greater driving distances, the appearance of new warehouse retail formats that are often located in large spaces away from residential areas, and online retailing have made location somewhat less central as a store choice criterion (Achabal, Gorr, Mahajan 1982). There are various measures of shopping attitudes. For instance, Urbany el. al (1998) and Ailawadi et al (2001) have specifically developed a scale for measuring attitude towards grocery shopping. Childers et al (2001) developed a scale to measure attitude towards shopping that utilizes a technological device. In the Indian context, in a study by Sinha (2003) is available on the subject of shopping styles. In his study involving 300 respondents, Sinha suggests that the average Indian shopper seeks emotional value more than functional value of shopping. Several consumers’ studies have studied the “fun side” of shopping as opposed to “shopping as a work” (Babin et al 2005; Batra and Ahtola, 1991). Most of these studies have described shopping either in terms of its utilitarian aspects or in terms of its hedonic value. Kumar and Leone (1988) and Walters (1991) find a significant impact of promotions on stores switching traffic. However, it is unlikely that consumers would keep track of weekly promotion on a multitude of catagories in all the stores in their neighborhood. Bucklin and Lattin(1992) show that retail promotions in any one category do not directly influence a consumer’s store choice decision, but they indirectly affect where the category is purchased. Baker et al.(2002) find that store environment factors, particularly physical design perceptions, significantly affect consumers’ perceptions of merchandise price, merchandise quality, and employee service quality.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:

1. To study the inclination of customers towards the different types of formats as established by retailers.

2. To study whether different retailers use their own recognized items or manufactures brands to give the better services to customers for shopping.

3. To see the response of the customers towards malls which are now opening up in the tier III cities.

HYPOTHESIS:

There is no remarkable difference between retailers dealing in large-format outlets and traditional counters in background of following five points: (1) quality and variety of products, (2) services given by retailers (3) price of products, (4) sales staff, (5) other factors.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

Primary data was collected from retailers. Questionnaire was supplied to 20 such retailers. Retailers are given questionnaire to be filled up. It was designed to collect information from retailer regarding services, quality and variety, price of product, sales staff and other factors like: free home delivery exchange of goods, credit facility, sales on approval basis. The questionnaire was provided to the retailers independently. A sample size of 20 retailers was taken. List of all the renowned retailers of Bilaspur was obtained so as to select 20 retailers from this list representing different scales of outlets. All the 20 retailers are dealing in grocery business. There are some retail shops deal in groceries and other products and commodities. Of such stores only grocery department is taken into study. They were 5 big multi brands stores like Big bazaar, Mahima big bazaar, Easydays, Yash super bazaar, Apna super bazaar. 5 traditional grocery retailers from the core market area, 5 specialty store owners, 5 near-by shops from different localities (from high to low society). The size of these retail shops was from 500 sq.ft to 20000 sq.ft.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION:

For analyzing the data various percentage were computed. Taking five factors for study viz:

A1 – Quality and Variety of Goods

A2 – Service given by retailers

A3 – Price of Product

A4 – Sales Staff

A5 – Other services

Out of the above factors, reasonable and fair price is the factor which is always preferred by the shoppers.

Table 1: Popularity-wise retail format

Types of format	No. of respondents	Percentage
Large retail format	8	40
Traditional retailers	6	30
Near-by shops	2	10
Excusive (specialty) counters	4	20
No response	0	0

It indicates that most preferred type of format on the popularity basis is large format retail stores located either in malls or separately established. Traditional stores of core market area are next to large format stores in the scale of popularity.

Table 2: Retailers preference toward Store Display Management

Types of display management	No. of respondents	Percentage
Window dressing	9	45
Evenness in goods arrangement	5	25
Brand wise display	3	15
Any other	3	15

Window dressing is the most successful way of attracting customers to the store.

Table 3: Customer’s loyalty towards retailer

Factors	No. of respondents	Percentage
A2-Quality and Variety of goods	10	50
A3-Services by retailers	3	20
A4-Sales staff of store	6	30
A5-Other factors	1	10

Fair price is the factor for which 98% respondent agreed, regarding customers loyalty for any retail store. Hence it is not shown in the table.

DISCUSSION:

1) Preference of customer for large format store than traditional stores (table 1) : -

It has concluded from the study that, large format stores are more preferred by customers than traditional stores. Customers preferlarge format stores on the basis of factors such as quality and variety of goods, services provided by stores, sales staff and other services.After large format stores most preferred store is traditional shops. Hypothesis is not been supported.

2) Store display management by retailers (table 2)

Out of the various ways of presentation of goods and commodities, window dressing is the most preferred and successful way of getting attraction of customers. Window dressing is decoratively done in large stores. And the next most desirous method of attracting customers attention is arrangement of alike items at one place. Levy and Weitz (1998),opined that merchandise presentation is a key issue in store management.

3) Factors attracting customers to stores (table 3)

The results provides that price, quality and variety of goods and commodity is a vital factor, which attracts customers to the stores. The behaviour of sales staff towards customers has noteworthy effect on customers as per retailers. Large format retailers are paying more attention on improving the skills of sales staff to leave an unfogettable impression in the minds of the shoppers. Price has been found unexpectedly the frail cause in this matter .

4) RetaileRs opinion regarding private brand Vs manufactures brand.(table 4)

From the study it has been concluded that customers do not compromise with brand in commodities like oil/ ghee, tea/coffee, soap/detergent. They wanted popular brands instead of retailer’s brand. Where as in case of cereals/pulses and dry fruits customers are ready to purchase retailer’s brand.

CONCLUSION:

The focus of study is on customer’s preference towards different retail formats. It has been concluded from the above study that, large format retail business is rapidly catching pace in bilaspur city. As per retailers, it is giving close competition to the traditional retailers in the market.

Preference of retail stores in case of grocery, by customers not only depends upon the factors discussed above. It also depends upon some other factors like distance of customer’s residence from retail store, conveyance available to customer; particular age group a customer belongs to, customers’ retro relations with retailers. The impact of such variable has not been considered in this study. The results are helpful for retailers for classification and synchronization of goods which affects customers shopping attitude. It is also concluded from the study that customers enjoy shopping when they are given opportunities to access store by their own.

Table 4: Brand preferred by customers

Percentage of contribution	Tea/ Coffee		Oil/ghee		Cereals/ pulses		Soap/ detergent		Dry fruits
	R	M	R	M	R	M	R	M	R	M
Up to 25%	20	80	15	85	70	30	15	85	80	20
26 – 50 %	35	65	10	90	80	20	10	90	70	30
51 – 75%	40	60	12	88	85	15	20	80	65	35
76 –100 %	25	75	10	90	80	20	25	75	75	25

R stands for retail brand, M stands for manufacturer brand.