Many years ago, I remember, I had forgotten to buy from the grocer some products mentioned in a laundry list of items I was supposed to buy. I was returning from office and suddenly I remembered my assignment. But before I could realize that I had forgotten the chore of buying stuff, I had almost reached my residential complex premises and it was pretty late too for me at the end of the day to hunt for a supermarket nearby. I looked intently at my pager and read the message again and as I was doing it I realized there was a store within the Raheja Vihar premises where I was staying too. Accessing the store was easy, though I had to walk a few steps down the pedestrian walkway to reach the store. I went through the list (this time more carefully!) and carefully ordered all the stocks found in the list. My enthusiasm to buy ran riot once I began observing the shelves and I picked up a few more items too. No sooner had I picked up items to my heart's content than I realized I did not carry enough money to pay for the bill and the neighborhood grocer would not entertain any credit card of mine. By a reflex, I started keeping away those items I did not immediately need so that I might not miss anything mentioned in the list and avoid any wrath. As I was doing this trade off, the neighborhood grocer understood my plight and he opened up gently to me. He asked me if I had a problem and before I could respond to him, he claimed that he knew me as Gibson working for Shoppers' Stop living in Sunglory. He precisely gave me a description of all my family members just to say that I could take everything with me without making any payment then and that I could pay him later. Believe you me, this was the first time I visited that neighborhood store but he had known me well in advance. That day I realized the importance of customer relationship, truly forged by a well intending store guy. His business was not just to know his products and service deliveries but to know his customers like the back of his palm. Since then I have felt free to visit this store. Customer psychology is understood and practised by small store owners well.
I have been an advocate of the power of positive thinking. Small things attended to by traditional retailers do work wonders to establish a good relationship with customers. The traditional tactics of retailers wooed customers to the store time and again.There is the old story of a good retail grocer and the bad retail grocer
in India, which I have narrated in my Retail Management book as well: Once upon a time there were two grocers. One was perceived to be good
and the other was considered bad. The good one always used to weigh his
cereals, pulses, grams, etc. in such a way that if he had to weigh a kilogram
he would initially place in the weighing balance produce less than a kilogram
and then keep adding to it until it reached the required weight. The bad
retailer, on the other hand, always rather unconsciously placed much more and
then kept removing stuff from the scales until it weighed a kilogram. The good
retailer had actually acquired such skills to create a positive image in the
minds of the customers! The story indeed has become cliche as there is no weighing that happens in any store now!
Visiting the neighbourhood supermarkets in my catchment area nowadays, I find that my shopping experience has something to teach me every time. It is even difficult to find the same set of sales and service people in the shop floor for more than just a few months. Modern or traditional, it is only the entrepreneurial passion to be closer to customers to win in retailing, that matters! When the sales associate on the shop floor gets a flat and fixed monthly pay cheque every month, how can one expect from him/her any entrepreneurial passion to serve with the right attitude so that customers could in turn bring real life time value for the business to succeed?
- Dr. Gibson G. Vedamani
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