Rural India

Rural India constitutes 69% of Indias population. 86% of Rural population earns less than $2 per day (most of Indian BoP households earn $67 per month). There are more phones than Radio in Rural India (100million subscriber base). Only 0.29 per cent of the male population has reached the graduation level (0.04% for women) and 6.% of the rural males arc educated up to the middle level. 70 % of the disabled in India lives in rural areas Safe Drinking Water 67% of rural households in Jharkhand did not have access to safe drinking water; More than 90 percent of rural households in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh did not have access to toilets within their premises Connectivity In 2006: 13% in rural India had to travel > 30minutes; 2008: just 2%! When it comes to connectivity, Rural Indian BOP segment has grown more than urban in last year Nearly 50% of the villages in the country do not have all weather roads, making physical communication to these villages highly expensive

Definition
Population less than 5000, Population density is 400 person/sq km, at least 75% of male population engaged in agri- activities.

Retailing In India
Retailing is one of the pillars of the economy in India and accounts for 13% of GDP.[1] The retail industry is divided into organised and unorganised sectors. Over 14 million outlets operate in the country and only 4% of them being larger than 500 sq ft (46 m2) in size. Organised retailing refers to trading activities undertaken by licensed retailers, that is, those who are registered for sales tax, income tax, etc. These include the corporatebacked hypermarkets and retail chains, and also the privately owned large retail businesses. Unorganised retailing, on the other hand, refers to the traditional formats of low-cost retailing, for example, the local kirana shops, owner manned general stores, paan/beedi shops, convenience stores, hand cart and pavement vendors, etc.

Most Indian shopping takes place in open markets and millions of independent grocery shops called kirana. Organized retail such supermarkets accounts for just 4% of the market as of 2008.Regulations prevent most foreign investment in retailing. Moreover, over thirty regulations such as "signboard licences" and "anti-hoarding measures" may have to be complied before a store can open doors. There are taxes for moving goods to states, from states, and even within states.

Indian Retail Industry

The Indian retail industry has scaled impeccable growth over the last decade with an amiable acceptance to organised retailing formats. The industry is maturing towards modern concept of retailing, cornering the conventional unorganised family-owned businesses. India has been ranked as the fourth most attractive nation for retail investment among 30 emerging markets by the US-based global management consulting firm, A T Kearney, in its Global Retail Development Index (GRDI) 2011. AT Kearney has also conducted a different study which says that organised retailers should follow hypermarket concept to penetrate through Indias US$ 435 billion industry. According to the report, given the gigantic size of the Indian retail market, it is no surprise that many Middle East retailers, most recently Lulu, have announced their interests to extend their retail operations to India. Retail in India: Market Dynamics The Rs 18,673 billion (US$ 401 billion) Indian retail market entails only 6 per cent of itself as organised retail segment as of 2010, according to Booz and Co (India) Pvt Ltd. Hence, there is a great potential to be explored by domestic and international players. The Business Monitor International (BMI) India Retail Report for the fourth-quarter of 2011 forecasts that the total retail sales will grow from US$ 411.28 billion in 2011 to US$ 804.06 billion by 2015. The report has underlined factors like economic growth, population expansion, increasing wealth of individuals and rapid construction of organised retail infrastructure as major drivers for the optimistic forecast figures.

According to a research report named Retail Sector in India by Research and Markets, Indian retail sector accounts for 22 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and contributes to 8 per cent of the total employment. The report further highlighted that hypermarkets (currently accounting for 14 per cent of mall space) will witness immense progress in the Indian landscape. Retail: Key Developments & Major Investments According to a report by research firm CB Richard Ellis India, over 6 million square feet of retail mall space was added across India in the first six months of 2011; primarily due to aggressive expansion by organised retailers. For instance, Kishore Biyani-controlled Pantaloon Retail added 2.26 million square feet (sq. ft.) of retail space during the fiscal 2011 and booked over 9 million sq. ft of retail space to fructify its expansion plans in future. Cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in single-brand retail trading during April 2000 to June 2011 stood at US$ 69.26 million, according to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). Driven by changing consumption patterns, favourable demographics, expanding middle class and greater government support, retailers are eagerly foraying into untapped avenues of Indian markets by making huge investment plans. For instance

Jubilant FoodWorks Ltd, which operates fast food chain of Dominos Pizza in India, will invest over Rs 70 crore (US$ 15.03 million) in the FY12 on new stores and commissaries.

Reliance Industries Reliance Retail (that runs supermarket and hypermarket chains) is planning massive expansion across the country by doubling the number of stores in several specialty formats in 2011.

The brand More, operated by Aditya Birla Retail, will open 12 hypermarkets and 150 supermarkets in fiscal 2012. After the expansion, its supermarket stores tally will reach 715.

Shoppers Stop Ltd, which has 43 departmental stores and 10 hypermarkets under the brand Hypercity, plans to open four more hypermarkets and 10 departmental stores in 2011.

Along with the metros, the retailers are betting big on tier-II and tier-III cities as well.

The Aditya Birla group firm, Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, is aiming at a turnover of Rs 1,100 crore (US$ 236 million) for FY13, on the back of its pan-India expansion spree, including small cities and towns.

In a bid to triple its turnover from retail segment, Shree Ganesh Jewellery has formed an alliance with Bharti Retail's 'Easy Day' market format to promote its Gaja Lites range of jewelleries. The company plans to launch 250 outlets in tier II and tier III cities under its flagship brand Gaja.

Japanese imaging technology major Nikon Corporations subsidiary Nikon India is focusing on tier-II and tier-III cities to fuel its growth. The company is planning to extend its presence to 2,400 channel partners by March 2012 from the current 2,000 of them.

Retailing over Internet According to a latest report by a leading industry body, online retail segment in India is growing at an annual rate of 35 per cent which would take its value from Rs 2,000 crore (US$ 429.5 million) in 2011 to Rs 7,000 crore (US$ 1.5 billion) in 2015. Tata Group firm Infiniti Retail, that operates consumer durables and electronics chain of stores under 'Croma' brand, is in the process of tapping net savvy consumers. The company is contemplating on options like cash-on-delivery to make online shopping easier for consumers, even for those who do not use debit or credit cards. Similarly, the Future Group, that operates a dedicated portal Futurebazaar.com for online sales, has revealed that it is targeting at least 10 per cent of the company's total retail sales from digital medium.

Government Initiatives The government has moved a step closer to allow FDI in multi brand retailing in India after the committee of secretaries (CoS) gave its nod to permit 51 per cent of FDI in the sector. The recommendation will now head to the cabinet committee on economic affairs, which will take a final decision on rules to be imposed and the level of FDI to be allowed. The regulation may soon pave way for foreign players like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Cheshunt, who have been vying for an opportunity to enter India. Road Ahead Global consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) expects Indian retail sector to be worth US$ 900 by 2014 in its report Strong and Steady 2011. Food and groceries is considered to be the largest segment in organised retail, followed by apparel, footwear and consumer electronics. Over the next five years, we expect organised food retail (through convenience stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets) to grow by over four times from the current US$ 8 billion, said Raghav Gupta, Principal, Booz and Co

Rural Retailing
The rural market in India is attracting focus from all the major retailers in apparel, food & groceries, electronics, consumer durables, supermarkets etc. Some of the retailers looking at the rural markets are discussed below: In a bid to enhance its rural retail operations, Coromandel International Ltd (flagship of the Chennai-based Murugappa Group), plans to open 200 rural retail stores in the hinterlands of Andhra Pradesh (125) and Karnataka (75). The company operates stores in Andhra Pradesh under the name 'Mana Gromor Centers' and in Karnataka under the name 'Namma Gromor Centers.' Moreover, Tupperware is planning to increase its rural penetration and enhance its sales force in rural areas . Bata India Ltd has decided to foray into rural markets for volume growth. The company has developed four new sub-branded products especially for the rural market.

Rural Retailing concept The higher income group in rural India is growing at a phenomenal rate, and the concept of brands and quality are very much prevalent. These current consumption trends provide compelling opportunities for marketers to capitalize on the increasing mass market in India for almost all product categories. Both corporations and entrepreneurs are exploring the rural retailing. ITCs Choupal Sagar, HLLs project Shakthi and Mahamaza are some of the models that are being tried out. Many more such concepts are likely to be tested in the future Share of Urban versus rural markets

The case for Indian retailers to explore rural markets is strong. Given the size of the rural population and the agricultural income growth in rural India, the rural market is definitely an opportunity for retailers with an innovative retail proposition. A clear indicator of this potential is the share of the rural market across most categories of consumption .In the following, we describe three highly successful rural super market initiatives in India.

Mahamaza.com

The company Mahamaza, ended the year with a turnover Rs 1.2 billion. The Mahamaza model is quite simple. Any person wishing to be a dealer can sign up with Mahamaza by making a one-time payment (around Rs 5,000). Then the dealer gets orders from his town or villages and places these orders with Mahamaza. The company further consolidates orders and gets discounts from durables and FMCG companies due to its bulk buying. A part of this discount is passed to the dealer as his commission.

Hariyali kisaan bazaar

Hariyali Kisaan Bazaar is a pioneering micro level retailing effort from DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd.(DSCL), which seems to creating a positive impact in the way rural India shops and is also revolutionizing the farming sector. This is a chain of centers that aim at providing end-to-end ground level support to the Indian farmer to improve his profitability and productivity.

The first outlet came up at Del Pandarwa (near Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh) in July 2002 and so far 15 Hariyali Bazaars have been set up: 6 in UP, 5 in Punjab, 3 in Rajasthan and 1 in Haryana. On an average, each centre is attracting 150-200 farmers a day. Each Bazaar operates in a catchment of about 20 km radius and approximately 15,000 farmers live in this area. Each center provides help to improve the quality of agriculture in the area through 247 support by a team of qualified agronomists. They provide a complete range of good quality, multi-brand agri inputs, access to modern retail banking and farm credit at reasonable rates of interest, farm produce buyback opportunities and access to new markets.

IT has been a critical backbone to these chain of centers. With support from Polaris Retail Infotech Limited, these outlets make use of IT to provide online support on latest technical advancements, weather forecasts and market prices. Maintaining extensive farmer databases with micro information about the farmers field to provide them customized services is another innovation. The first phase involves setting up of 30 Bazaars in 2006 and then scaleup to cover 200 locations in the next 6 to 7 years timeframe.

Choupal Sagar

ITC International Business Division (IBD) embarked on a Rural Retail marathon with the launch of its first Hypermarket Choupal Sagar on 15 August 2004. IBD is creating a twolayered infrastructure for rural retail: the e-Choupal and the Sagar Choupal. Launched in June 2000, e-Choupal forms the first layer where farmers have access to Internet within walking distance from their villages. The e-Choupal services today reach out to more than 30 lakh farmers in over 28,000 villages through its over 5,000 kiosks across six states (Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan). ITC plans to extend the initiative to 15 states over the next few years. The physical infrastructure of Choupal Sagar presents the second layer, which brings multiple services under one roof. The core function of this infrastructure is to ensure higher income to the farmer and availability of good quality product and services at most competitive prices. Choupal Sagar, a farmers Mall of ITC, is a place where the rural consumer gets almost all of his requirements under one roof. From clothes, FMCG goods, watches, home furnishings and consumer durables to automobiles to tractors, pumping sets, fuel, pesticides, seeds to health care, retail banking to restaurants and much more are available in the Sagars. It also includes the Mandi, providing an ideal setting for farmers to offload their produce at best possible prices. ITC is planning about 25 such malls with investment of Rs.100 crore, in rural India soon. This first Choupal Sagar is located at Sehore, 38 km from Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh. ITCs mall is thus substantially different from a typical urban hypermarket. It provides all allied activities, products and services at one place. The first 7,000 sq.ft mall at Sehore, housed in an eight-acre sprawling complex, has a buying centre for purchasing rural handicrafts as well as agricultural commodities, a hypermarket for selling goods to the rural consumers, a petrol pump, and a farmer facility centre consisting of cafeteria, bank, insurance Company, training centre and a primarily health centre. Reports indicate that the initial response to the hypermarkets has been encouraging and on an average each mall draws about 700-800 customers every day. By end of 2005, Madhya Pradesh is likely to have 25 such malls, and another 25 may come up in other states such as Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Many more innovative concepts are likely to be tested in the future as marketers and retailers begin to acknowledge the power of the rural consumer. These concepts are likely to go a long

way in bringing a huge rural population within the purview of organized retailing, thereby, increasing the size of the total market.

Review Of Literature
A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge on a particular topic. Most often associated with science-oriented literature, such as a thesis, the literature review usually precedes a research proposal, methodology and results section. Its ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on a topic and forms the basis for another goal, such as the justification for future research in the area. According to Cooper (1988) "a literature review uses as its database reports of primary or original scholarship, and does not report new primary scholarship itself. The primary reports used in the literature may be verbal, but in the vast majority of cases reports are written documents. The types of scholarship may be empirical, theoretical, critical/analytic, or methodological in nature. Second a literature review seeks to describe, summarize, evaluate, clarify and/or integrate the content of primary reports". The literature review for my research study is as follows:

2010 Ramesh kumar and Rajeev ravi The Role of Point of Purchase in Shopping Behavior in An Emerging Market-The Indian Context As India moves into modern retailing with several changes with regard to its markets, bands and consumers there are unique challenges that a multinational company entering India has to cope up with, whether it is a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company or a multinational retail chain like Tesco or Wal-Mart. There are unique retailing aspects that need to be studied in detail by these companies. While the world over the retail density (number of shops per 1000 consumers) is on the decline, the retail density in India is on the increase. This is because of the fact that small neighbourhood shops called kirana shops about eleven million in India. They have been a part of the Indian shopping culture for several decades and even toady organized retailing (modern retail outlets) contribute just 2-3% of the total retail sale in the country. Point of Purchase (POP) materials are used both by kirana shops and by organized supermarket retail outlets. This study investigates the impact of POP materials on kirana shop purchases and the purchases of consumers from supermarkets. Given the importance of POP material on the purchase of FMCG purchases, the authors feel that this study will be useful to bridge the gap between theory and practice and will provide valuable insights to managers involved in retailing.

2010 Sanjeev verma:An Exploratory Study of Consumer Preferences for Retail Store Selection in Mumbai With the entry of new entrants like Pantaloon, Reliance, Trent and Bharti-Wal-Mart in the organized retail market, the pressure is forcing retailers to work out strategies that will help them emerge unscathed from the upcoming cutthroat competition. In such intense competitive environment, retailing business is greatly affected by the patronage behavior of consumers. Understanding factors affecting consumer preferences for retail store selection can assist retailers in developing appropriate marketing strategies towards meeting the needs and wants of consumers. This study examines the linkage between consumer preferences and the importance of some salient store attributes. Strategic implications of such preferences are also discussed.

2009 Sambit kumar Mishra: Information Technology Intervention in Retail: Global Approach The starting point for this research is some of the changing conditions for sourcing products in fast moving consumer goods industries. We are seeing increasing internationalisation and also more and more information available for retailers through IT to support how buying is performed. Still, much of the research on retail buying focuses on one part of the process, i.e. the buying decision, rather than the process as such. This focus will tend to give a quite narrow perspective. Instead, this research focuses on the whole process that is involved when retailers source products. A conceptual framework, building on existing literature on retail buying as well as literature from other disciplines is presented. In total fifteen propositions are developed concerning how retail buying processes may be structured under different condition, how information may be used during the process and how IT could enter into the process. The paper ends with some suggestions for empirically testing the different propositions and also some general conclusions.

2009 Babu p George: E-Retailing of Medical Services in the Context of Telemedicine Globally, the re-engineering of healthcare services is being carried out with the aid of improved usage of information and telecommunication technologies. One important advantage of ICT incorporation into healthcare is that it facilitates the retailing of healthcare services in multiple ways. Retailing of complex and critical services like medical services has always remained as a serious problem, upsetting the policy makers as well as the entrepreneurial and managerial communities, alike. In the absence of effective retailing, patients had to go to the service provider, often located thousands of miles away, and end up spending more time and resources. The service provider too faced a lot of problem

s in managing large crowds in the centrally located and resource limited physical premises. The present paper examines how telemedicine can be used to effectively resolve some of the pressing issues in the retailing of healthcare. It argues that modern telecommunications technologies have to be integrated into the retail healthcare delivery process to decrease the centralization of Indias public healthcare service, to improve the access to specialty care, to reduce transaction cost, and to enable quick response in the event of disasters.

2008 Aamir ullah Khan: Rural Retail and Infrastructure Constraints in Rural India is at the centre-stage of all retail growth in the future. However it continues to suffer from lack of basic infrastructure. Caught in the vicious poverty-cycle, rural India, in absence of adequate infrastructure, rural India finds it difficult to undertake activities that can accelerate economic growth. Home to close to 69 per cent of Indias total population, rural India faces the daunting task of providing sustainable income and employment opportunities to a major section of the population, especially the lower-income households. In absence of infrastructure facilities, there is lack of market-access to rural population, slow growth in organised retail and thus, limited livelihood opportunities, stagnation in agriculture and aggravation of rural poverty-levels. Absence of infrastructure also makes rural markets fragmented, characterised by high costs of transactions and high information asymmetry

2008 A M Sakkthivel Strategic Placement of Organized Retail Formats in Potential Markets A Critical Analysis Indian organized retailing is witnessing a considerable momentum. It is evident from the entry of leading domestic business houses and global retail giants in to this growing segment. The buoyancy in consumers spending power and increasing disposable income makes this segment very lucrative. The conglomerates are investing billions in setting up back end and front end operations. The conglomerates are adopting different retail formats suit to their operations and ensure their reach. However, the buzz of organized retailing is still hovering in metros and tier 1 cities. Each conglomerate adopts a unique retail format in order to position their entity and communicate to their target segment. Yet, none of the conglomerates could come out with the tested retail formats and decide on the potential locations beyond metros and tier 1 cities. Hence, this paper aims at addressing the issues related to the strategic placement of appropriate retail formats in the potential markets. It also highlights the different retail formats, immediate potential markets, categorization of potential markets and mapping of the retail formats to the respective markets.

2008 C S Venkata Ratnam Changing Consumer Behaviour and Emerging Challenges to the Retail Trade In The sustained and rapid growth of China and India, which together provide home to over a fifth of the humanity, are creating a tremendous surge in consumerism on a scale which is unprecedented. Both the countries are attractive destinations for investment and production as well as sales and marketing. Yet, EIU Survey on corporate priorities for 2007 and beyond suggest that more than a quarter of the CEOs believe that lack of customer insight is a barrier to growth in the emerging economies: Although the differences between the developed and developing worlds are eroding, the survey makes it clear that they are still very distinct business landscapes. In the developed markets, executives point to high labour costs and saturated markets as the critical challenges. Innovation is a priority respondents primarily look to drive revenue growth by selling new products to existing customers. In emerging markets, by contrast, the headaches are quite different. Labour costs are low and markets are largely untapped. Executives are focused instead on managing shortages of local talent and plan to grow mainly by selling existing products to new customers.

2008 Madhumita Mohanty Retail Head Start - Choosing The Right Location Any Retailer or aspiring Retailer would have heard of the 3 critical elements needed to make a store successful. These are Location Location Location!

Choosing a store location is like choosing a location for your house. When a person decides to buy or build a house, she goes through several decision variables. The same set comes in handy while choosing a Retail location. You can be the best Retailer in the world, but if you set your shop in the wrong location, chances of a successful business are lessened considerably. Starting off with the wrong location is like running with your hands tied behind your back.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

Objectives are the goals set by any enterprise or a person. All the plans, policies and strategies are formulated only to meet these objectives. Setting up of objectives is a very important part of the research process. Objectives provide a direction to the research study as all the research work is focused to fulfill the objectives. Defining the problem and research objectives is often the hardest step in the research process. Careful problem definition would have avoided the cost and delay of research and would have suggested research on the real problem. When the +-*problem has been defined, the manager and researcher must set the research objectives. A marketing research project might have one of three types of objectives. Sometimes the objective is exploratoryto gather preliminary information that will help define the problem and suggest hypotheses. Sometimes the objective is descriptiveto describe things such as the market potential for a product or the demographics and attitudes of consumers who buy the product. Sometimes the objective is casualto test hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships. In this way, research problem and objectives can be considered the most important part of a research study as no researcher can proceed further before defining the appropriate research problem and setting up the objectives in accordance with the research problem. Objectives for this research study are: 1. To study the preference of rural consumer towards branded products. 2. To study the awareness level of rural consumer with regard to branded products 3. To study the preference to buy in branded retail outlet 4. To study the BOP approach

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research methodology is a scientific and systematic way to solve research problems. A researcher has to design his methodology, i.e. in addition to the knowledge of methods/ techniques, he has to apply the methodology as well. The methodology may differ from problem to problem. Thus the scope of research methodology is wider than research methods. In a way, research methodology deals with the research methods and takes into consideration the logic behind the methods we use. This chapter describes the scope of research work, research design, data collection method, sampling plan, data analysis and limitations of the project. Scope of the study This study limited to the rural consumers in Ludhiana and near by area. This study is conducted on 100 rural consumers of Ludhiana. This study covers the preference of rural consumer towards branded products and shopping in branded retail stores or malls. Research Design According to Kerlinger, Research design is the plan, structure and strategy of investigation conceived so as to obtain answers to research questions and to control variance. Research design is in fact the conceptual structure within which the research is conducted. It can be described as a blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data. This research study is descriptive in nature as it describes the preference level, and level of awareness regarding different products. Sampling Plan A sample is a portion of people drawn from a larger population. It will be representative of the population only if it has same basic characteristics of the population from which it is drawn. Sampling is the process of selecting a sample out of population. A sampling plan consists of many elements. These elements are discussed below in context with my research report:

Universe: Universe for this research study contains all the rural consumers Population: Population for the research study includes all the rural consumer in India.

Sampling Frame: Sampling frame for this research report includes all the consumers who buy or willing to buy branded products in branded outlet

Sampling Techniques: First of all pilot survey has been conducted. The techniques for selecting a sample are quota sampling ,convenience sampling and snowball sampling.

Sample Size: Sample for this study contains 100 respondents. Sampling Unit: consumer from rural area of ludhiana

Punjab College Of Technical Education

Major Project Synopsis On Branded Retailing In the Rural area of Ludhiana and Near Area: A case study based upon the BOP approach

Submitted To
Ms. Chitwan Bhutani (Assitant Prof PCTE)

Submitted By
Ashish Kumar 104972249388