Right Here Right Now

All this while in an MBA college.. We had been focusing of customer oriented marketing and aggressive selling but today I faced the truth (which was like hitting the wall in the face) But it was totally worth it..

Mr.B.S.Nagesh, Vice-Chairman of Shopper's Stop India was in College the other day and he spoke to us about his life and experiences. Very few people have the sensitivity to "Join the Dots": To be sensitive to your surroundings and draw inferences thereby adding wisdom.

He had all of it, Also he shared his thoughts with us very frankly and every moment was worth listening to.

He spoke about the retail industry in India and as we know its not an easy business; For E.g: Planning assortment (Breadth and depth) according to Region, Age, SEC, Personality etc is the biggest challenge in India as every 100 kms the culture changes.

This actually made sense to me, We are not one country and its amusing that when MNC's set their foot in India they set up their offices one in Delhi and another in Mumbai believing that this is sufficient to manage the Indian market. What I would like to question them is would they do the same in America: set up one office in Washington and another in New York?

Mr. Nagesh mentioned something very surprising and He explained it rather well.. Something thats gonna stay with me forever..He said "Retail is a simple business"- He called it the Paradigm of ONE- Selling One SKU for One consumer out of One square feet and creating one moment..He said we should focus on:

1) Delivering a moment of delight:Be it a pan vala shop which delivers 200 moments each day or a big retail outlet that delivers 20,000 moments each day. In delivering moments the marketer has to develop the consciousness that each family has 4 sets of consumers so rather than targeting family we should target individuals.

2) Right Here-Right Now: Retail is described by Right Here-Right Now, Response to marketing activity can be viewed in a few days (Rather the next day of implementation) as the intermediaries are less.

This actually made sense to me and enhanced my interest towards retail industry.

These moments actually add worth to your stay at an B-school. Looking forward to more of these moments....