Guest Lecture – Dr. Gibson G Vedamani

Guest Lecture on Role of Service Marketing in Retail

Date: 17^th May 2021

Speaker: Dr. Gibson G Vedamani, Founder & Managing Partner – Retail Solutions & Learning Technologies LLP

Dr Gibson started the lecture with an introduction to the Retail sector and informed the students that next to Agriculture, it is one of the largest sectors, standing at almost 1 trillion output. He then explained that the driving force in retail is ‘Consumption’. He then went on to explain the sector to students in simple terms by terming retail as the exchange of products for money. He also detailed the various kinds of retail – Organised, Semi-organised and Unorganised.

Dr Gibson mentioned that relationship is paramount in retail. A friendly relationship between customer and retailer has always been pivotal. He then explained the concept of Ticket size, which in simple terms refers to the value of a customer’s bill and how it is proportionately related to the services offered by a retailer. He gave a few examples to demonstrate this:

• A standalone unit of Shoppers Stopalways has ‘Valet parking’, wherein the store employees take care of the vehicle parking. It not only saves customer’s time which they then spend in-store; but also avoids the unpleasant struggle of searching for a parking spot, which leads to tension-free shopping, both factors having a high chance of increasing the customer’s bill.
• In western countries, apparel retail happens with detailing. For example, in European countries, every pair of jeans has a waist and length size mentioned. It leads to enhanced customer satisfaction as there is minimal need for alteration.

So, he said that, in a nutshell, service marketing is about meeting customer expectations with good service quality. The services are exceptional if all the expectations are met and the services are well delivered.

Dr Gibson then pointed to the concept of heterogeneity in services and how it is the key to serve customers better and fulfil their needs. He went on to give various examples in this regard to show how retailers are providing support to customer at every touchpoint:

• Self-service in modern grocery stores, where customers can evaluate the loose product and take the quantity as desired
• Self-checkout in Amazon Gostores – here, there are no cashiers. Entry in the store, selection of items as well as payment happens via the app.
• Nordstorm – with over 100 stores across the USA, it is a full line retailer that caters to almost every segment of customers.
• Walmart – shifted focus quickly to online retail and deliveries during the pandemic and strengthened vendor connect for that. They even supported the government by offering store parking lots as testing centres.
• Tesco – usually served the weekly one-time trip customer, changed the merchandising strategy to include pre-packed customer baskets.
• D-Mart – known as the best performing retailer in the stock market, shifted focus to deliveries during the pandemic and also introduced the concept of mobile stores.
• Big Basket – managed personnel shortage in innovative ways, tied up with Uber for deliveries and reinforced safety practice.

In the end, Dr Gibson advised students to keep an optimistic outlook always and that despite the pandemic, India has a sufficiently resilient strategy to lead the retail sector out of the pandemic and grow.