Emergence of Organized Fruit and Vegetable Retail Outlets: Exploring Trends and Examining Shoppers’ Experiences in Hyderabad

Abstract

Organized retailing has been evolving at a rapid pace in India. Rising incomes, increased urbanization, improved communication networks and underlying infrastructure took organized retailing from offline to online format with ecommerce and quick-commerce becoming the buzzwords in the modern-day retailing. These organized retail chains brought remarkable changes like improved access, better prices, emphasis on product quality and safety with respect to food value chains. Another latest trend with organized retailing is the evolution of niche format retail stores. This study is an attempt to understand the factors driving the emergence of these niche format retail stores by taking into account the “Fruit and Vegetable” segment. One of the emerging stores in Hyderabad that is operating in “Fruit and Vegetable” segment has been considered for the study.  The key store attributes considered for the study were Customer Service, Location, Pricing, Promotions, Billing experience. These attributes were used to assess the overall shopping experience of the shoppers. With the help of convenience sampling 69 responses were collected from active shoppers of this nice store segment. The authors employed descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA to present and discuss the research findings. It was found that the key store attributes considered had an overall positive impact on the shopping experience of the shoppers.