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Critically Analyze the

“BIG SALE DAY”


Of

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

DR. ANURUPA B. SINGH MANI MISRA C- 02

VISHRUT GULATI C – 33
Introduction to Big Bazaar

Big bazaar is the largest hypermarket chains in India. Big Bazaar is also the parent chain of
Food Bazaar, Fashion at Big Bazaar and eZone where at locations it houses all under one
roof. Its claim to fame was through giving a holistic consumer experience by giving a variety
of products at best prices. Soon Big bazaar became a favourite destination for millions of
customers around the country. The brand offers more than 170,000 products which cater to
families and youth of the country in over 250 operational stores spread across 120 cities. The
company believes in being a 1 stop shop for its customers by offering products like plastics,
home furnishings, utensils, crockery, cutlery, sports goods, car accessories, books and music,
computer accessories and many more. Big bazaar offers its customers an emotional bonding
experience through the value offerings, aspirational appeal and service levels. Over the years
Kishor Biyani for his vision and leadership, and Big Bazaar for its unique proposition to its
customers, have received every prestigious consumer awards both nationally and
internationally. Big Bazaar is a destination where customers get products which are available
at prices lower than the MRP; setting new level of standard in price, convenience and quality.
Big Bazaar has created a strong value-for-money proposition for its customers though its
unique selling points. The high quality of service, good ambience, implicit guarantees and
continuous discount programmes have helped in changing the face of the Indian retailing
industry.

Evolution of Big Bazaar

The company Big Bazaar was founded in 2001 by the Future Group which is now one of the
oldest hypermarket chain in the country. The first outlet was opened in October 2001 in
Kolkatta. Soon after the chain expanded to different markets by opening stores in Hyderabad
and Mumbai which started the successful journey of the brand to opening 250 stores to date
in various cities.

Product Mix

Housing more than 170,000 products in its store; Big Bazaar deals with multiple product mix
to attract its customers time to time by ensuring a complete shopping experience. Some of the
product lines are:

 Electrical
 Apparels
 Food
 Chill Station
 Home and Personal Care
 Fashion and Jewellery
 Child care and Toys
 Other services

Challenges for Retail Sector in India

Consumer behaviour over the past few decades has evolved drastically. The retailers are
finding it difficult to survive in the fiercely competitive environment. The consumers are
getting more educated and adapting to the ever changing luxuries of e-commerce and
globalization. The westernization of the Indian society has changed the thinking of the Indian
customers. Ease of shopping, convenient location with availability of all desired products
under one roof has become a common need of the customers.

One of the biggest challenges being faced by the Indian retail sector is the lack of availability
of retail space in major locations in different parts of the country. High real estate prices in
India are making retail expansion difficult in the country. Indian retailers are required to shell
out more for retail space impacting their profitability.

Another challenge is the availability of trained manpower. With the customers becoming
more educated through the availability of the internet, there is a constant need of man power
who can tackle customers in the best way possible to ensure the customers still receive the
best possible service and remain loyal to the brand.

New Proposed Government E-Commerce Policy

Another recently major challenge affecting the retail sector is earlier foreign players could
own up to 49 per cent in a local single-brand retail chain but had to approach the department
of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) for a go-ahead to acquire the remaining 51 per cent
of the Indian retail company. Now they can fully own their Indian operations without
applying for permission. Single-brand retailers now can offer new experiences leading to
more stiff competition.

The government now is planning an e-commerce regulator, seeking the Competition


Commission of India to look into mergers in the sector below the threshold limit and asking
e-commerce companies to phase out discounts within two years to level the battle field for
the domestic retailers.

MAHA BACHAT

Big Bazaar launched one of its iconic sales to celebrate Independence Day starting August 11
for 5 days. The sales included some well lucrative deals that were hard for stores to compete
with and drove its customers in frenzy and lured them to the store. The brands focus on value
proposition through pricing led for the brands previous sales to be a huge success. The sale
offered various benefits to the customers, some of them were:

 Customers will be able to avail a cashback of up to Rs. 1,200 in digital wallets Future
Pay Wallet and Paytm under certain conditions.
 50% discount on Prestige gas stove, pressure cooker and cookware set at Rs 5,999
compared to its MRP of Rs 12,980
 50% off on apparels
 50 per cent discount on 32-inch Koryo brand LED TV
 Customers using HDFC Bank card will get an additional 7% discount on shopping
with the retailer
 To avoid long queues, customer can get online Pass from official website by simply
providing 10 digits mobile number
Evolution of Sales in Big Bazaar

In 2006, Kishore Biyani hit a master stroke by introducing the Maha Savings Day to celebrate
Republic Day on 26th January which offered its customers products are throwaway prices and
marketed by calling it 'Sabse Sasta Din'.

The sale was a great success for the Big Bazaar which made them introduce another unique
offering in 2007 called 'The Great Exchange Offer'. The scheme offered its customers to
exchange their old items in lieu of credits that would allow them to buy products in the store.
Big Bazaar ran this scheme for a month to capture the maximum audience and not restricting
its customers to a short window of exchange.

In 2010, Big Bazaar accounted for about one third of food and grocery products sales through
retail in India. Analysts opined that Big Bazaar had succeeded largely due to its focus on
consumer behaviour in India.

Moving with the Trends

Big Bazaar has been able to remain a success story because of its continues ability to meet
customer demands as well as being able to connect with all its customers. To attract more
customers, Big Bazaar tweeted that some lucky customers will also get a chance to meet
Sachin Tendulkar in this years Maha Bachat Sale. The brand focussed its marketing towards
the youth in this year’s sale by using the Omni channel approach. Big Bazaar announced a
new campaign – ‘The Mahabachat Anthem’and are betting big on gamification, ‘The Sone Ki
Chidiya’ to attract the millennial’s. Big Bazaar also initiated that all Maha Bachat offers
would be available at Bigbazaar.com for customers to shop online from across the country
which would be available from August 10, midnight 12:00 am. The parent company Future
Group ensured that the offers were also available at almost 1000+ stores across the Future
Group formats including Easyday, Nilgiris, Heritage, Central and Brand Factory. Any
customer walking into these stores will be able to enjoy the Maha Bachat offers right there
and deliveries will be happening through multi-channel orchestration that’s unique to the
Group.
ANALYSIS OF THE MAHA BACHAT

Man management

Employees

 Extended shifts – The employees were exclusively i.e. for the purpose of the
Mahabachat Sale Day, were managed under three shifts. A 10 hour shift for women,
from 9 – 10 pm , an 11 hour shift from 9 – 11pm and night shift, which is 11pm
onwards for the stockists faciliting inventory management. As per the interview
conducted, the shift hours were almost double the regular shifts.
 Increased Manpower – To manage higher footfalls and conduct effective customer
management, more number of employees were assigned on the floor. As per the
interview, a 100 employees across all sections including food bazaar, fbb apparels,
Home Town.
 Increased security and checks – The security was tightened mainly for two reasons,
one was large footfalls as well as for the impending Independence Day. Each bag was
being checked and zips were being locked so that no shop lifting can take place. Apart
from that, baggage counters were properly maintained such that recovery of submitted
bags is efficiently done.

Customers

 Sale customised signage’s – The store was abundant in signage’s and posters with
offers and discounts provided. Whether it be any category or section or aisle. Further
every aisle and section had product specific offer information clearly put out.
 Payment options & customer loyalty - Big Bazaar managed various payment
options to facilitate all kinds of customer needs related to payments. Since many of
these schemes were not limited to one time transaction, many of them extended for as
long as 6 months to a year. This shows how determined Big Bazaar is to ensure
customers are satisfied and retained with them for longer times.
In Big Bazaar’s case, 10% additional discount offer is applicable on SBI debit card on
shopping of Rs 3000 or above in one transaction. A maximum discount of Rs 400 per
transaction per card is allowed. To add to this, cashback of Rs 600 is applicable on
shopping of Rs 3000 – Rs 24,999. Customer will receive Rs 600 cash in FuturePay
Wallet. Rs 600 cash will be credited as Rs 100 for 6 months starting 1st Sep’18 till
Feb’19 etc.
Various sales staff were trained for assisting customers waiting at the billing line, and
informing them on the offers available for their carts. Membership cards were being
very aggresively pushed by the employees and constast emphasis on the benefits from
the card were being done.
 Home delivery - Free home delivery for shopping above Rs 1000. This is obviously
to ensure that customers have a great all round experience with them, whether it is
during purchase time or after sales time.
 Convinient check in and check out for heavier products (by providing warehouse
carts, inclined ramps, sales person assistance),
 Service counters–At the Kalkaji branch, behind the billing counters, there is a long
service counter that runs along the breadth of the store. This service counter, serves
not only as a help desk but also all queries related to guarantees, warranties,
membership cards, payment methods, even gift wrapping and dispatching of heavy
items etc was done through here. This is a great for CRM as much of the chaos or
probable chaos is managed through here.
 Add on services - Further, many of
the services that are provided at the
Big Bazaar regularly were also
strenghtened. Some of the add on
services like cart area, provision of
drinking water, clear demarkation
of sections and aisles to facilitate a
fulfilled customer experience were
ensured.

Market Basket Analysis

Market Basket Analysis is an important


component to facilitate product placement,
design sales promotion basis different
customer segments thereby improve
customer satisfaction.

Essentially market basket analysis


provides insights into how products must
be placed or grouped. It studies various
complementary combinations of goods,
from analysing customer buying
behaviour. It is a great cross selling
technique. The analysis lies on the premise that a customer buying a particular product is
likely to buy another product strategically placed adjacent and or the utility of which is
complementary to already picked product.
Product& Aisle Placement

 Related utility goods – It was observed


that customers who bought a particular
item were also buying items either of
related utility or from shelves placed
close by. From cart observation, we
noticed that people who came to buy
oil and wheat atta, were almost
certainly buying the dals on discount,
placed an aisle ahead. Or people who
were buying skin care items, were
almost certainly buying hair care items
alongside as well.

 Combos – At the store, a number of


combos were curated to especially
facilitate the sale. It was observed that
almost 60% of the products were on
‘BOGO’ style offers, such as Buy one get
one, Buy two get 2. Apart from them,
almost 90% of the store products had
discount offers on them.
 Bulk Buying – It was observed that products which had items on them were being
bought in bulk, not only to extract maximum usage but also to benefit from
economies of scale and sale discounts. Customers were ready to buy in bulk even
if they needed to store the products because immediate utility was not present.
 Consumer behaviour – It was observed that two kinds of customers were shopping
at Big Bazaar during the sale day. One, who had planned lists and were picking up
the required products on offers obviously. And the second, was the one with
impulse buying behaviour. These customers were picking up products with no
immediate usage, but simply because of the rationale that good deals were being
provided to them.
Billing Management

Big Bazar availed services like:

 Pre booked Fast Billing slots – Big


Bazaar gave its customers opportunity to
‘Skip the Billing Line’ and effectively
tackled the queue problem. For
Mahabachat sale, customers could reduce
their checkout time by booking their
‘Quick Checkout’ time slot online. This
unique concept is a step by the Big Bazaar
team to address the time that customers
spend in the billing line. Customers can
book their 'Tokens' for quick checkout
online on Bigbazaar’s website between
11th – 15th August.
 Mobile Point of Sale (smooth digital payments and laden with offers by payment
gateways and banks, like Paytm & SBI). Big Bazaar gave its customers an
opportunity to conduct billing from tablets and mobile phones installed at the store.
This not only gave customers the chance to free themselves from long queue waiting
time.
 Express counters – These counters help those customers who need to buy items that
are less than 10 in quantity. Therefore, for them, instead of standing in queues to get a
few items billed, Big Bazaar opened 3 Express Counters at the branch. Although this
is a regular feature of Big Bazaar and not just limited to the sale period.
 Increased staff at POS – It was observed that at each billing counter a minimum of
three staff were present. One assisting in procuring all the products from the cart onto
to the cash table, the second one scanning and billing all the products and the third
assisting in arranging the bought items in bags or carts for sending off the customers.

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