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Tag: Food Bazaar

  • Devendra Chawla, CEO, Food Bazaar, chronicles the many shifts in consumer behaviour and attitude over the last decade

    Now & then: Here’s how contemporary consumers behaved a decade ago

     

    By Devendra Chawla

     

    Consumers of today have evolved into a hyper active multi-taskers, constantly squeezing the 25th hour out of a regular day. Here are some of the most radical changes between contemporary consumers and how they behaved as recently as a decade ago.

     

    In this article, Devendra Chawla, CEO, Food Bazaar, chronicles the many shifts in consumer behaviour and attitude over the last decade.

     

    The star of a movie called ‘me.’

    Indian consumers are a liberated lot. It’s not hard to spot a 40-plus man in a colourful ensemble; green or red trousers, if you please. Women no more need male or peer endorsement as approval of what they wear or how they look. They expresses beauty in their own way – via choice of apparel and personal grooming.

     

    There’s friction building between conformity on one side and self identity on the other, as consumers see themselves as stars of their own movie. They want to play multiple roles and make many appearances.

     

    Hair streaking, frowned upon once, is now a style statement. So are male grooming products. Consumers can now choose facial structure, shape of nose, and skin type thanks to contact lenses, plastic surgery, botox jabs, etc.

     

    Yes, people do look up to trendsetters, but instead of aping them, prefer to create their own sense of style. Brands can no longer feed on the fear, insecurity, or preaching. This generation of consumers will make allies of brands that allow self-expression.

     

    They are a product of abundance unlike yesterday’s consumer, who was born in scarcity. And yes, today’s consumer may reject brands that claim to help one find a groom or a job based on the colour of skin.

     

    Zero to best in 2 seconds

    Upgrading sequentially from good to better and better to best stands disrupted. Now consumers parachute into the best of one category while at same time making a trade off in other categories for value deals. This approach sees many youth opting for a top of the line smartphone at the start of their careers, while eating at budget restaurants.

     

    Unlike the past, where category upgrades coincided with a change in income, now they make a trade off, choosing most premium in the category where they want the best and settling for good or better than average in others.

     

    What else can your product do?

    From a mere mode of communication, the mobile phone is a life supporting system including a music player, a portable gaming console, weight loss monitor, camera and most recently a shopping basket given the mania for e-tailing.

     

    An unlikely category like food is starting to take a few cues. While consumers sweat it out in gyms and perform yoga, food brands have been stretching from the role of satiating hunger to manage and support functions like weight management, stress and hypertension management, brain, muscle and bone development, height gain, etc via ingredients like Omega-3, vitamin and mineral premixes, co-enzyme Q10, etc.

     

    Products that provide convenience and perform with speed are much in demand. A case in point is the emergence of multigrain, multivitamin, multimineral food across the spectrum. Expect food to multitask more and provide more benefits.

     

    Back of the pack

    In a world where “you are what you eat”, consumers want to know what are they eating. The attention has shifted from the front to the back of the pack, an uncommon phenomenon 10 years ago. They are checking for ingredients, potential allergic reactions, gluten as well as carb, protein and energy values. Expect back of pack to become more engaging than just being statutory information.

     

    Even home food gets ‘outsourced’

    Banks have outsourced many functions, opting for a tight focus on the core. And so, even if a consumer calls a BPO, they are still dealing with the bank brand. The same applies for telecom operators and many other industries. As more women step out to realise their ambitions, they’ve kept the flag flying for home cooked meals.

     

    What has been outsourced here is preparatory functions like cutting vegetables; either left to the maid or the supermarkets which stock precut veggies. This has also given rise to fruit platters, ready batters, pastes, mixes, powders, etc.

     

    The last mile is where the lady of the house has her hands and eyes, converting all these first stage conveniences to home cooked food, thus serving as the gateway for customised meals. The kitchen is a food factory with multiple gadgets and ingredients allowing even the time pressed lady to convert the dining table into a “food court at home on demand.”

     

    Again an uncommon phenomenon 10 years ago. Here each family member can have different cuisine sitting next to each other, yet with the final touch of it all being home cooked food.

     

    Cooking is the new golf

    From provider to a nurturer – the role of the man is undergoing a radical change. The kitchen is his new golf course, even if occasionally, these activities compete with each other. As more women step out, men find themselves taking care of the house, children and the kitchen.

     

    Punishments works better than complaints

    Reactions to brands have never been so quick, personal and unique. The old cliché about a happy customer telling three people and an unhappy one telling ten has been unimaginably amplified in a world powered by social media where consumers routinely pour out their emotions to hundreds or maybe even thousands of friends and followers. The power of an organisation or brand is all but equal to one consumer’s tweet or Facebook or YouTube post.

     

    Remember, “United breaks guitars”, by Canadian country band Sons of Maxwell? A complaint song about a broken guitar on a United Airlines flight has grossed 14,299,132 views on YouTube at last count.

     

    Brands must prepare to listen to consumers 24/7 specially when it comes to grievances. As consumers do things they never imagined they could and experimentation is order of the day, they are moving from transactions to experiences. While consumers have been upgrading, its time for marketers to upgrade more often.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2014, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Licensed to republish

     

  • Four years ago, women shoppers accounted for around 55% of the consumers in modern retail. Today, up to 70% shoppers are male consumers, be it single, with family or friends.

    Attracted by self-service format, more men take to shopping

    By Writankar Mukherjee & Sagar Malviya

     

    Most daily-use product advertisements might still be talking to housewives but, hey, it’s men who now do most of the shopping in FMCG, grocery and food segments. Sales data obtained from leading food and grocery retail chains including Future Group, Spencer’s Retail and Aditya Birla Retail shows that single male shoppers account for 40-45% of their total customers, more than double the number of single female shoppers at 20%. And up to 70% of their shoppers are male consumers, be it single, with family or friends. Just four years ago, women shoppers would account for around 55% of the consumers in modern retail.

     

    Retailers attribute this new trend to social changes with men sharing household responsibilities with their partners and many men cooking at home, buoyed by a flurry of television cook shows.

     

    “The social change and modern retail has turned grocery shopping into a weekly activity unlike earlier when men used to consider it as a boring chore,” Devendra Chawla, president (Food Bazaar) at the country’s largest retailer Future Group, says. “In fact, men now actually look forward to shopping in super markets,” he adds.

     

    Mohit Kampani, president and CEO at Spencer’s Retail, says the key reason for growth in male shoppers is self-service format, which has made shopping more convenient and delivering wide assortment at one location. “In fact, male shoppers are making a transition to self-service retail away from the traditional formats,” he says. This is good for retailers because men are impulsive shoppers than women and they like to experiment with newer products.

     

    Male shoppers tend to buy more of vegetables and impulse-driven categories such as confectionery, biscuits, frozen food, drinks and juices and skin care products than their female counterparts, Kampani says. As per Spencer’s Retail estimates, male consumers shop frequently for topping up the monthly shopping basket, while female customers tend to purchase monthly requirements.

     

    Russell Berman, CEO (hypermarkets) at Aditya Birla Retail, says male shoppers also enjoy the process of picking and sorting and are aware of quality choices like texture, size of grain and smell, that are mandatory checks when purchasing loose produce. “Men are also open to trying out new products and their basket sizes are larger than those of women shopping alone,” he says.

     

    Mr Chawla of Future Bazaar says the dominance of male shoppers is driving growth of newer categories like gourmet food and grooming products. A recent study by TNS in partnership with IIM-A, KiE Square and OgilvyAction reveals that men don’t care much about the pack size or product format.

     

    “All they care about is the brand. And if a small pack of their favourite brand is all they can afford, they’ll go for it even if another brand offers a larger pack size for the same price. This is an advertiser’s dream,” the study notes.

     

    It also says that even female consumers buy more when they bring a male along. “In their company, women spend between 30% to 50% more than they would have spent if alone. In fact, women spend the least when shopping alone and the most when shopping with their spouse,” the study says.

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2013, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Licensed to republish

     

  • In recent weeks, the retail industry has been abuzz with speculation that the Future Group was in talks with India's richest man Mukesh Ambani to sell stake in its flagship Big Bazaar hypermarket network

    Kishore Biyani not to sell stake in Big Bazaar & Food Bazaar chains

    By Chaitali Chakravarty

     

    Retail magnate Kishore Biyani said that he is not in talks with anybody to sell stake in Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar chains because his Future Group has sorted out its debt crisis after three back-to-back deals in the past one month.

     

    “We are not in discussions with anybody. I don’t want to divest my core retail business now. I want to run it,” Mr Biyani told ET. “Our debt levels are very comfortable and divestment, if any, will only be in non-core assets,” the Future Group chief said.

     

    In recent weeks, the retail industry has been abuzz with speculation that the Future Group was in talks with India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani to sell stake in its flagship Big Bazaar hypermarket network, which contributes almost 65 per cent of revenues of Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd, the listed entity of Future Group.

     

    Reliance Industries operates a nationwide network of retail chains under Reliance Retail and Mr Ambani sees this segment as one of the engines of future growth for the conglomerate.

     

    A Reliance Industries spokesman denied any negotiations with Biyani. “We deny that Reliance Industries has ever been in talks with Future Group or Mr Kishore Biyani for any stake sale,” he said.

     

    A person aware of developments in Future Group, however, said Reliance Retail and Future Group had explored the possibility of a partnership about three months ago. But the talks did not proceed because the AV Birla Group moved faster and agreed to buy Pantaloons department chain, helping Future Group improve its precarious financial situation.

     

    “At that time the priority was to bring money into the company and the Pantaloons deal addressed that issue,” the person said.

     

    The Future Group, which has been in an aggressive expansion mode, ran into a crisis with consolidated debt of Rs7,800 crore that weighed on its profitability. Pantaloon Retail has been spending more than Rs100 crore in interest over each of the past three quarters. This started to pinch as consumer spending slowed. That was when Mr Biyani started looking to sell assets to pare debt.

     

    Last month, the Future Group sold a majority stake in Pantaloons department chain to AV Birla Group’s Aditya Birla Nuvo for Rs1,600 crore that included Rs800 crore of debt transfer.

     

    Then, last week, the Future Group announced sale of its 53.67per cent stake in Future Capital Holdings to US-based private equity firm Warburg Pincus for Rs4,250 crore, which included Rs450 crore of cash payout and Rs3,800 crore of debt transfer. Pantaloon Retail also raised Rs 200 crore through a preferential share allotment last week.

     

    “In the past one month, Biyani has managed to reduce his debt by Rs 6,000 crore. Now, he is in no hurry to sell any of his core businesses,” the person close to Future Group said. A senior official of a rival retailer, however, said Mr Biyani will ultimately get a partner for his value chain. “The only question is if he will tie up with an Indian company or wait for foreign direct investment to be allowed in the sector so he can find an international partner,” the person said.

     

    Meanwhile, Mr Biyani plans to sell more non-core assets in a bid to make the Bombay Stock Exchange-listed Pantaloon Retail debt-free by March 2013.

     

    He plans to raise Rs1,650 crore by October by offloading shares in his insurance and stationery joint ventures, the consumer electronics chain and home furnishing network. This would include raising Rs1,000 crore by divesting stake in Future Generali insurance. This will help prune Pantaloon Retail’s standalone debt, which stood at about Rs5,500 crore at the end of March.

     

    The group also plans to shed 40 per cent stake in the electronics retailing business eZone when it merges it with Noida-based InTarvo Technologies, which specialises in providing technical support to large corporations and retailers. InTarvo could not be contacted for comment despite repeated attempts.

     

    Mr Biyani also plans to sell a minority stake in home furnishing and do-it-yourself chain Home Town network for about Rs 300 crore in the next two months.

     

    He said his group’s May deal to cede controlling stake in Pantaloons chain to AV Birla Group was a one-off transaction. The company will only sell minority stakes in any future deals in its core retailing business and will maintain majority stake in such ventures, he said.

     

    Mr Biyani added that he doesn’t want to touch Future Value Retail, which operates Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar, as the group’s debt situation can be controlled.

     

    The only way he wants to touch Big Bazaar is by undertaking some tweaking in the profitable 150-strong chain by introducing improved services and consumer-centric approaches, underscoring with a new tagline ‘Aapki Sewa Mein’ (or, ‘At Your Service’). Big Bazaar is changing its tagline months after it adopted ‘New India’s New Bazaar’.

     

    Source: The Economic Times
    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved