Nice Experience at Retail Stores

NICE EXPERIENCE AT RETAIL STORES

Birth of Retail Industry

      We all know what is fashion is all about .Basically fashion symbolizes attitude or nature of the person. Fashion is changing with a speed of light. All fashion conscious people wants change in there wardrobe with the same speed. Some fashion lovers are regular shoppers and they frequently visit different fashion destinations. There are number of reasons which contribute jointly to enhance retail culture in India like rise in young population, handsome salary packages, nuclear families and increase in working female population all these factors will enhance the shopping capacity of normal public too. Another feather in the retail cap in India is allowing 51% Foreign Direct Investment in single brand outlet. Nobody is interested to do shopping from conventional markets due to limited variety, stale stock and heavy price tags at the same time supermarkets have wide range of products like apparels and accessories, cosmetics and toiletries, bag and baggage, grocery, Travel and leisure under one roof and public enjoys low cost quality goods with very little chances of duplicity, no problem of bargaining and most important in crowded metro city retail stores are having good parking place. But at the same time different small local kirana shop’s will assume these retail stores will end there earnings, more impact of foreign companies and they will end community shopping but I think this is absolutely wrong perception because in India retail is the largest source of employment after agriculture there are nearly 12 million retail outlets in India and this will score India as a highest retail store density and retail stores and malls are still confine to big cities where as in small towns there are only kirana shops so even kirana shop merchant’s can able to purchase material at low price from retail shops and then sale them in small towns and earn profit. Some retailers also traps Indian thinking and develop discount stores in order to attract bargain loving Indian public and some are offering extra discounts and mega sale during festive season like Diwali, Id, and Raksha-Bhandan etc.

         Now days all type of public with no difference of caste, creed and income levels moves towards retail stores. In India retail industry is growing like anything, that’s why          some foreign retail companies are already sharing Indian retail market revenue like Nautica US lifestyle opened the store in Pune, Tata and Woolworth tie up opened stores in Mumbai and Malad ,Walt Disney had ties up with Devyani International Ltd,Dubai based Damas Jewelry and Flemeningo International’s Indian division are interested to start  duty-free shops in the country, for selling products like jewelry and watches and few big retail giants like Wal-Mart tie up with Bharti are also interested to spreading there roots in Indian markets for seeking higher profit returns, France’s Auchas $50 million dollar chain of grocery and consumer durables are keen to open stores in India, HAS (Hayel Saeed Anam Group) a Yemen based company are planning to come to Indian market with a tie up plan with Reliance.

Demand for New Innovative Technology

        We all are convinced by all above facts but there are still some problems in retail stores. Firstly lots of time are wasted in billing even in festive season and in weekdays shopping time are much less than billing time and secondly problematic to choose right size of outfits and matching accessories. Although visual merchandizing of stores are too good, convenient and entire range of products are visible to customers for there choice .Some of the retail companies like Pantaloon Retail India limited (PRIL) are using various types of software for e.g. JDA® Software for store planning and visual merchandizing, but main problem is trailing different sizes, colors and patterns of outfits standing in a long queue outside the trail rooms. Even this type of waiting is much more painful with small kids because they get irritated even after one or two trials. Choosing a proper fitted birthday dress for children of age group of 4 – 8 years is more like a war with no weapons. Sometimes trailing white garment is normally not allowed in maximum retail stores this seems that purchasing white garment suppose to be a crime and another confusion arises when we bring five or six dresses in the trail room it is difficult to remember how we look in each dress. To overcome above problems sometimes retailers design one model according to this customer is allow to trail only three garments and they can spend average 10-20 min in the trail rooms still it is really very dissatisfied to trail only limited number of garments and still there partners that are there parents, friends or relatives in crime also wait near the never ending queue outside the trail room to offer their opinion.  

Billing is Problematic

        In retail stores there are number of billing counters still billing is so much time consuming only reason behind this are Bar Code Readers only gadget used for billing in almost every retail store in India. No doubt Bar Code Readers reduce the time spend for billing and increase the accuracy. Like one of the common problem which we all face at billing counters is suppose in case of missing tags gentleman at the billing counter abruptly stopped billing and rushed 2 floors above or below the billing counter to get another product and used its tag to determine the price, this is not the end there are still other:

Problems in the Bar Code Readers

• Single item scanning at one time
• Kept the item at line of sight.
• Wear and tear in the bar code strip.
• More human involvement.
• Much more time consuming

 Birth of Wireless Gadget ? RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device)

   As entire globe is busy in innovations and inventions so why not retail industry. RFID is one of the outputs of the innovations in retail industry. There are number of software companies who are developing different types of RFID applications specifically for retail industries for e.g. WIPRO solutions develop WIPRO retail only to fulfill retail customer demand, Origin products contains huge list of only retail products like RFID tags , POS reader and handheld readers etc. It is basically a small chip somewhat similar to chips used in our mobile phone. This is consisting of a tag, transponder, and power source. Tag emits short frequency radio ways which is the part of the light spectrum and it is received by the transponder and information written on the tag wirelessly transferred to the system connected amount of data stored in the tag vary in different types of tags some can store upto 2 KB on the other hand some low cost disposable tag can able to store only 96 bits. Some tags are small like rice grain ad enclosed in glass covering and some are big like a credit card and embedded by plastic covering. Some can be reused and others are disposed of after use.

         Tags are of different types according to type of frequency utilized by the tag .There are three types of tags like LF(Low Frequency),HF(High Frequency) and UHF(Ultra High Frequency) and distance of data transmission is like just 1 foot for LF tags , read less than 3 feet in HF and more than 3 feet for UHF Tags.  Power is utilized by the power-source present with the tag. According to orientation of power source there are two types of tags active and passive. Passive tags are supplied with external battery no such battery is present in active tags. Active tags have long read range as compare to passive tags because they have own power source but some times due to there higher cost constraint they are ignored by various retailers.

        Choice of type of tag used is depend upon number of reasons which is taken under consideration by the firm. Type of the product is also one of the reasons for selecting type specific type of the tag for e.g. liquid and metal both show repelled behavior for RF(Radio Frequency) so for the liquid like shampoos etc normally passive tags are used and as metal reflect RF so tag is placed small place apart from the commodity .

Source: www.traze.in/images_default2/about_rfid_img1.gif

Advantages of RFID over Bar Code Readers

RFID is automatically reduces all the problems of Bar Code Readers and increase the accuracy and reduces the time spend for billing. There are lots of advantages of RFID over Bar Code Readers like some of them are:

• No line of sight is required.
• Group of items are scanned at one time.
• No wear and tear in the chip.

RFID technology calculates the total price of the commodity in the cart automatically and this will speed up billing hence checkout process and eradicate problems in the billing register and increase overall customer satisfaction level. RFID is not only used in billing it is very much useful in inventory management and unauthorized movement because misplaced items and out of the stock are main problems in the inventories these can be solved by mounting RFID chips in the shelves so automatically if item is misplaced or below reorder level automatically buzzer will alarm the store personnel’s and  gate antennas reads all the items at the exit door and if the item is not properly billed in that case automatically alarm raises and we can control theft by employees , customers etc.

WOMEN SAY NO TO SHOPPING ? Mall Voyeurism

Three walled Changing room

Source: http://www.gabriellogan.com/fitting-rooms

Even trailing is like a nightmare for young girls, female staff and women’s also there are number of news related with trial room voyeurism in different malls. This mall voyeurism is most disagreeable in women sopping experience. Above picture proves the fact that these type of three walled changing room is so much risky for female customers as they are open from the top anybody can easily peeped in. Even by all efforts if we have chosen correct size outfit again a long queue at billing counter .All these problems can be eradicated by some magic don’t you think and that is one and only one RFID (Radio Frequency identification device) a wireless magician. So now in coming future after using RFID at billing counters time spend  for billing reduced manifolds.

NO MORE Trialing

          Huge crowd standing outside the trial rooms so again requirement of some jadoo for retail stores is just like jadoo of Koi Mil Gaya i.e. Magicmirror as name suggest something similar to magical mirror of  fairy tales

Magicmirror is a virtual mirror virtually means it seems even though it is not there. Magicmirror enables us to see you wearing particular picked up outfits without even putting off the outfit. Magicmirror is a RFID enabled mirror

present in trail rooms of retail stores in coming future. When customer brings the garment inside the trial room it digital display automatically displays description of the garment, other available sizes and colors and also suggest matching accessories. There is an another option if there is some problem with the size so customer is able to send the request from the mirror only and message directly transferred to the PDA (Portable Digital Assistant) of store employees and then they provide personnel assistance to the customer, this will create personalized environment for the individual customer and enhance customer’s faith for the retail store which will create strong and loyal relationship with the firm. This magicmirror will bring end to the long queue outside the trail rooms and also stops incidents of trail-room voyeurism. Magicmirror also helps in inventory management and tracking items entering and leaving trial rooms .This entire setup of magicmirror in dressing room will cost around ($ 19.450).

       Magicmirror brings revolution in retail industry           Women in Magicmirror                        Man Trailing shirt in Magicmirror

          Source: rfidjournal.com/article/articleview             Source: http://www.forbes.com                   Source:  http://www.forbes.com

GOOD BYE and Have a Nice Shopping       

So RFID is main technology gadget may be used in coming future in order to reduce all the problems of retail stores .Though there are number of disadvantages of  RFID also that is cost , over dependency on technology but still advantages overpower the disadvantages. So we all expect unlimited growth of not only Indian Retail Industry but entire world retail industry will grow by proper and planned investment in information technology.

Pooja Singh
http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/nice-experience-at-retail-stores-683513.html