He knows the exact type of chilies my mother prefers, and knows a lot more about our household than me. He also, helps my father find the neighborhood electrician. He is not Google, just the owner of a small grocery store in the neighborhood. Just until a few years back, there used to be many grocery stores like his in my neighborhood. Many have closed down. We feel slightly handicapped and miss the familiarity of the shops. The substitutes have been very bright superstores with many options and ever changing brands.
My neighborhood is unlike most of the other parts of the bustling city. It has mostly people with 9-5 jobs or retired. We don't have enormous buying powers nor do we need bulk groceries. The shopping is a part of the weekly, sometimes daily ritual in homes. I wonder why the superstores should replace the small grocery stores.
First let me cover all the emotional comments on the trend of superstores. A superstore is a big, non-personal place, with staff that hardly knows you or the store itself. The staff, I must say, look like in perpetual dread of the hovering managers. The cashier is not even looking at at the customer when billing, his worries are with the big bulky swipe machine and the many mistakes that might remove him from the job he landed in, thanks to someone who knew someone. All in all, I think a superstore is just another of the modern invention of the management chain that establishes a system removing a little of humanity from the place.
Next, I ask how and why these stores come into existence. In the 1910s, Clarence Saunders started the first self-service super store. I must say that there are many contenders to who started the first of such superstores, but this is the one link that seemed reasonable. In the 1940s, the system of superstores replaced the small focused stores with large built areas and one-stop shopping centers, thus bringing organized retail concept. Quickly US adopted the concept of box stores in the 70s. Slowly the concept took over the world. More about the super-store history can be found at groceteria and the UK story here. And the concept arrived in India in late 1990s with Big Bazaar of the Future group, and somewhere in the past few years, it creeped into my sleepy neighborhood.
Yes, the size compared to the neighborhood stores is different, but it is the target and the profit margins that truly make a difference between the types of stores. While, the corner stores intend to sell to neighborhood familiar customers for small profits in terms of quantities bought, the super-stores rely on bulk buying behavior. In such behavior the bulk expenditure is rewarded with large discounts. The target customer of the super-stores is clearly the middle-class with steady monthly incomes and a bulk grocery shopping behavior. However, about 50% of Indian workforce, urban and rural are casual laborers. So, clearly the super-stores are not aimed to reach the common man, by definition.
The super-store structure is to provide organized retailing and remove the "middle-man". There have been other models that attempted at removing the middle-man and supplying the goods produced locally directly to the consumers. Such models are present for supplying milk in Gujrat, namely Amul. Welfare of the producer and the consumer was the key aim of the white revolution, that helped develop Amul and other organized milk supply chains in India. The affect of such a revolution is to enable the common man to become self-sufficient and also encourage entrepreneurship at an individual level. A super-store however, is a organization led system that would curb the current entrepreneurs who own small corner-stores.
However, if the development of superstore was based on creating a sustainable growth, the results would have been different. A super-store, would have been a chain of retail that connected the producers to the consumers via small local outlets using franchises owned by individuals. This is much like the milk supply model that is working so well in our country. A bigger central store here and there would not be seen as a competition, but a welcome member in a densely populated neighborhood with larger demands.
Perhaps, this is not the era to be asking for looking at societal sustainable developments. With apartments dotting the skyline of all the big cities, a new profiting model is just around the corner. This is based on online door delivery of all goods to the tech-savvy consumer. This system completely avoids the need for high-rent shop-floor and a friendly customer service. Now, we can live nuclear and only interact with the small screen of the phones, avoiding any human interactions that might connect us to the society. Soon, the small stores will die and then the big stores will become warehouses. In this new world an individual will be completely isolated and any spirit of entrepreneurship will need a minimum technology knowledge to even start. Common Indian is well known for jugaad, it is time to see what new jugaad will result to such artificial constraints. Meanwhile, my neighborhood will continue to see the slow decline of human relationships and familiarity that came with being here for years.
The super-store structure is to provide organized retailing and remove the "middle-man". There have been other models that attempted at removing the middle-man and supplying the goods produced locally directly to the consumers. Such models are present for supplying milk in Gujrat, namely Amul. Welfare of the producer and the consumer was the key aim of the white revolution, that helped develop Amul and other organized milk supply chains in India. The affect of such a revolution is to enable the common man to become self-sufficient and also encourage entrepreneurship at an individual level. A super-store however, is a organization led system that would curb the current entrepreneurs who own small corner-stores.
However, if the development of superstore was based on creating a sustainable growth, the results would have been different. A super-store, would have been a chain of retail that connected the producers to the consumers via small local outlets using franchises owned by individuals. This is much like the milk supply model that is working so well in our country. A bigger central store here and there would not be seen as a competition, but a welcome member in a densely populated neighborhood with larger demands.
Perhaps, this is not the era to be asking for looking at societal sustainable developments. With apartments dotting the skyline of all the big cities, a new profiting model is just around the corner. This is based on online door delivery of all goods to the tech-savvy consumer. This system completely avoids the need for high-rent shop-floor and a friendly customer service. Now, we can live nuclear and only interact with the small screen of the phones, avoiding any human interactions that might connect us to the society. Soon, the small stores will die and then the big stores will become warehouses. In this new world an individual will be completely isolated and any spirit of entrepreneurship will need a minimum technology knowledge to even start. Common Indian is well known for jugaad, it is time to see what new jugaad will result to such artificial constraints. Meanwhile, my neighborhood will continue to see the slow decline of human relationships and familiarity that came with being here for years.
