For the past 20 are so years I have been observing my neighbor hood Retail Shops & Establishment. Also whenever I get an opportunity to visit other areas in my city Chennai and also other towns if I am familiar with that place and if I visit those places often I make it a point to watch out for the Shops and Establishment trends in that area.
The Trend I see
20 years before, the neighbor hood was occupied by shops which are there almost since the early stages of that areas formation, the available space for shops and establishments were also limited. The requirement of the customers were are also of regular commodities. The customer were all regular customers the shop keepers, mostly the owners, had personal equation with almost all the customers. The business was predictable, no surprises, the customers were loyal, most of them had credit facility with the shops.
Point to be noted here is these shops and establishment took part in all the neighborhood celebrations in fact they volunteered to organize, sponsor and extended all kinds of support for these activities. This gesture in turn helped these shops & establishment to earn the loyalty of the customers. Some time the customers even willing to pay some premium for the product and services for the sake of emotional connect.
As times rolled by the extent of neighbor hood expanded and and there was seamless merger of many neighbor hoods because of dwelling units coming in between two distinct areas. This gave access to more than one vendor in the vicinity for the customers. Though the loyalty was in decline this was compensated by increase in the number of customers. The business started to be little bit unpredictable. As more and more dwelling units came up very close together the requirement of more than basic needs increased so new type of shops and establishments came in to existence and by now the landscape of the bazar has totally changed.
The old shops & establishments continued to do business in spite of competition with support from loyal customers. Due to less profit earning because of competition and also due to escalating cost of the events the old establishments showed diminished interests in the events. This was taken advantage by the new vendors and they started supporting these events but due to availability of more vendors the visibility and connect with customers for these new vendors was very much less compared to the old establishment.
Namaskaram
V Rajagopalan
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