**Answers in blue are previously done, I am writing 13, 16 highlighted red**.

Combating The Shoplifting Issue: Ramesh after the completion of his Post graduation in Retail Management decides to join his father's traditional grocery store. With his father's consent he decides to modernize the store in order to keep up with the changing retail environment. The area of the store being large enough he makes changes in the interiors such that he is able to display the merchandise like that in a modern retail store. The store receives a great response however after a month on doing the tally of inventory Ramesh realizes that there is a shortfall of almost 8% in his inventory due to shoplifting. He had caught some people trying to flick goods however during peak hours it was impossible to control such activities. Being a small business Ramesh cannot employ modern equipments to combat this problem and must look for some alternative to overcome this difficulty. What steps should Ramesh take to reduce shoplifting keeping in mind his small budget. ANS : the steps Ramesh can take could be 1. If his store has movable shelves and fixtures he can arrange them in such a manner that the area and the merchandise which is susceptible for shoplifting is under his watch. 2. The merchandise which is valuable or small in size i.e easy to shop lift can be kept in locked displays as we find in stores like Archies etc. 3. If Ramesh cannot employ modern equipments he can either hire an employee with minimum wages or ask his family members to volunteer as watchdogs (considering that hes into family business- family would be willing to help in such situations) to be on the shop floor. 4. He can hire a part time employee who can work only during peak hours.(Assuming the cumulative wages of the employee hired is far less than installing a modern equipment) 5. Innovative Shoplifters You are the store manager of the Big Bazaar store at Noida. One Sunday afternoon the cashier comes to you worried and narrates that he scanned an expensive Sherwani which he and you are sure is over Rs 2000 however the barcode scanner rang up a mere amount of Rs 299. You are sure that the barcode tag has been changed, however the customer is creating a havoc at the cash counter claiming that since the barcode shows Rs 299 the piece must be given to him. The chaos is attracting the attention of other customers too. What would you do in such a situation such that the offender is caught along with maintaining calm at the store and without attracting undue attention of other shoppers. ANS : Firstly taking the customer aside from the billing que and mention that a wrong barcode is on the merchandise we should proceed to the respective department to show the correct price of the merchandise on another piece of same sherwani. Once the customer creating havoc is away from other customers, he should be confronted . Refusal of service/sale can be opted and kindly ask the customer to leave if the degree of the situation has become extreme. 3. Pilferage Pains: Big Y Foods, Inc. an independently owned supermarket chain in Massachusetts and Connecticut having 58 stores has been facing a pilferage issue called 'Sweethearting'. (source) Sweethearting is

when a cashier does not scan an item before placing it in the shopping bag. This has been causing lot of losses to Big Y and is also extremely difficult to monitor since watching every transaction done by cashiers is virtually impossible. Also if an employee does get caught he or she always claims it to be unintentional which could also be a possibility. How can Big Y combat this problem? ANS: The nature of pilferage in Big Y is a complex situation. 1. Installation of camera at angles that it can notice products getting scanned by the cashiers and keeping a track of that pilferage(though it is an extensive work) but after watching the footages one can see which employee engages in sweet heartening . 2. Pilferage amounts can be deducted from the employee salary later on as warning and if the pilferage has been consistent over time then the employee can be dismissed. 3. Actions should be strict against pilferage so much so that the employees dont indulge into it looking at the repercussions. 4. Holiday Hitch: You have been made in-charge of the goods inwarding department for a few months. This is a very important department which functions on all days including holidays. There are 2 employees working in this department under you. A proper understanding has been formed with regard to taking holidays. Whenever one employee takes an off the other one does the duty. These 2 employees belong to 2 different communities. In the coming month there is an important festival of both the communities and both workers are insisting on taking an off. You also belong to the same community as one of the workers, so taking the side of any 1 of them would give this issue a sensitive turn to it. As a manager what would be your course of action in such a situation. ANS : As a Manager ,the festivals are important to both the communities. I have to make this situation to be understood by the two employees. Would have to unfortunately declare that it wont be an off for either of them including me but there would a Half day or shifts which covers the entire day operation divided into 3 people. Those shifts would be allotted according to span of work an employee handles so that everybody does the work , gets to spend time with family for half a day Or offer double the days salary to the employee whos willing to work on the festival day. Since I am not willing to risk the senior-subordinate relation which can be a problem in future. The best I can do for my subordinates is that I can give a compensatory off to them coupled with their weekly offs as a compensation to have worked on that day and for not granting them the leave incase they work on the festival day. 5. Ringing in the new ABC retail limited has taken a number of MBA graduates as management trainees this year. This caused a slight resentment among the older customer sales associates. The CSA s are not MBA s but have a lot of experience in the industry. Being older and much more experienced than the new guys they have developed a sense of insecurity and feel that they would be bossed over by the new guys. The new employees have also got these negative vibes and they too feel that since the older guys are more experienced they might try to overpower them. This has caused a lot of friction among both the groups.

As the HR manager of this company, what would be your course of action. 6. Tenant Trauma: ABC group is a Dubai based developer who has entered the Indian market in order to develop luxury malls. They developed a state of the art mall in Delhi. However to their mis fortune recession hit just as the mall was coming to its completion and a number of tenants withdrew their tenancy leaving just a few luxury retailers. Due to the attractive infrastructure of the mall the developers received offers from other non luxury retailers. However if they agreed to lease part of their premises to these retailers the few luxury retailers would also withdraw. And if they do not take these small retailers half the mall would remain empty creating a very negative perception on the consumers. What steps must the developers take to overcome this issue. 7. Mall Mania: You are the marketing manager of Town Mall which is located in Baroda. It is the first of its kind and thus has got a great response in terms of foot fall. Also as a marketing manager you have taken every step to increase the foot falls through various events, season wise and festival wise decor etc. However after 6 months of operations the sales figures show that the mall has not done well at all in terms of revenue generation. After looking at the trend in customer traffic it is evident that most of the customers coming to the mall are only window shoppers. 1. As the marketing manager what steps would you take in order to convert these foot falls into actual sales? 2. Discuss the evolution of malls in India. 8. Visual Treat: You have been appointed as the visual merchandiser for Prats Departmental store. The store is planning to open one of its outlets in Pune at Fergusson College road which has a number of colleges around it and also a residential area not too far away. It is considered to be one of the most happening areas in the city with an audience having a considerable disposable income. You have been given the duty of doing the visual merchandising for the store and also the window display. The departmental store has a range of Apparel, Books, Toys, Chocolates and Stationery. 1. What are the things that you would take into consideration and study before beginning your assignment? 2. Give a rough layout of placement of various merchandise. 3. What is the role of Visual merchandising in organized Retail? 4. How would you like to do the window displays? Explain with reason. 9. Foot Lock: Hypermall had been having a major issue of people shoplifting footwear by wearing the new footwear and leaving behind their old ones. So they decided to tag footwear and also tie them together. However soon after they started receiving complaints from customers regarding difficulty in trial due to the footwear being tied together. Customers trying footwear usually prefer to walk a few steps in order to check the comfort of footwear however this wouldn't be possible in the present scenario. 1. What must the mall do to resolve this situation and coming to a win-win solution? 10. Trial Terror: Prat's departmental store's apparel section has been facing a new problem. Customers keep picking up fresh pieces of apparel for trial. The store keeps its trial pieces of all sizes and variety separately for customers to pick up, but in vain. This is causing a lot of problems like fresh pieces getting soiled and

customers therefore not wanting to buy them, most of the pieces being in the trial room, other customers not able to see them, customers assuming that since their size is not in the stack it is not available at all and hence causing an indirect loss and many such problems. 1. How must this problem be tackled with? 2. Which operational issue according to you is the main reason for the occurrence of this problem? 11. Mis-Selling: Drona electronic store has a wide range of brands of various electronic appliances. Different brands usually have their own sales staff for their items or they pay Drona to appoint some sales staff for their brands. For certain brands Drona as well as the brand owners felt that since they are well known they did not really require sales associates. Also at times some sales associates of certain brands would be on leave. Therefore Drona tried making some sales staff sell other brand products. But after a while it came to the notice of the management that the staff were mis-selling the brands they were not associated with. They would only encourage customers to buy their own brands and at times even do some amount of negative promotion. Customers would at times want to buy a certain brand due to their specific needs but because of sales staff of that particular brand not being there and other brand staff taking care of that section they would at times mis guide customers into buying items they didn't need. This caused a negative impression about the store in the minds of the customers. 1. What would you do as the store manager to resolve this issue? 2. How would you change the negative perception of customers? 12. Shoppers stop :Grappling with Attrition of its frontline staff A young workforce as front line staff or CCAs(Customer Care Associates) at Shoppers Stop became a liability for the Shoppers Stop chain of stores when in 2002 the attrition rate among them touched 70%. The attrition was attributed to the CCA selection procedure which focused on young graduates with good personality and communication skills. This was considered necessary because customers preferred to talk to young salesmen who were considered more in sync with fashion trends. A research conducted by IMRB in the stores found that customer spent 28% more in stores with high employee satisfaction. They also found that the dominant expectations of the employees were: 1.Congenial working climate 2.growth opportunity3. Healty supervisor-CCA relationship 4. Salary Why are CCA's considered integral to the success of retail stores? Why is high turnover among CCA's worrisome to store management? Identify environmental trends that leads to high attrition among retail employees. How can Shoppers Stop foster Loyalty among its employees at the frontline?

13. Pilferage Plus at Sears

This is the layout of a two floored department that has sells bed and bath linen, fabric and sewing items. The circular display tables are piled up with sewing items like rolls of wool, thread, needle sets etc. The shelves have bolts of fabric displayed which is cut and given to the customers by the CSA on demand. Merchandise is displayed along the walls in the store and along the stairs from the basement. The basement houses sewing equipment like scissors, sewing machines, spare parts for sewing machines and bed and bath items like towels, bedsheets, pillowcases etc. All payments are made at the cash counter indicated in the figure. Identify the type of layout used.

>>The layout is a Grid Layout. Are there any major demerits in the layout? >> The Entrance and the Exit being the same a customer might enter the stores between the shelves and wall fixtures or go to the circular displays, Which is such cases does not clearly define the traffic flow of the store. It can also cause congestion during peak season/whenever they incur high footfalls like weekends or during festivals The marked(arrow on the layout) circular display can hinder traffic flow . Suggest how the layout can be improved without incurring substantial costs. >> The Shelf exactly at the entrance can be aligned horizontally like the wall fixture near the 4 circular displays so the entrance and exit area has more space to receive customers and reduce congestion 14. Hypermarket to Department Store When India Retail Private Ltd (IRPL), owners of Hyper-Fresh, the biggest and most successful hypermarket chain in India decided to shift their interest to lifestyle retailing, they opened up department stores in the lines of Pantaloons, Shoppers Stop and Globus. IRPL, to begin with, opened 4 department stores, each in the 4 metropolitan cities and 3 others, one each in Pune, Bangalore and

Hyderabad. The stores were launched with much fanfare and replicated the award winning store design elements associated with Hyper-Fresh. There were signages and indicative graphics along the layout flow of the store which mentioned of the sections and merchandise on display in any given section of the store. Navigating the department stores was a perfect delight just like in Hyper-Fresh. The new stores saw a credible footfall and an equally credible conversions. However, what tricked the store staff across all stores was the fact that the average ticket size of customers was far lower than all its competitors, despite the average footfalls being at par with them. Identify the reasons to IRPL's predicament.

15. Indi-Max Telecom Ltd In early 2008, the CDIT vertical in India was seeing good growth. RPG was in a collaboration with Cellucom of Dubai and Essar's The Mobile Store was doing brisk business. Seeing such activity in the vertical, one of the largest retailers in India, IndiRetail (IR) decided to enter the bandwagon too. IR got into a joint venture with Max Telecom (MT) of Dubai to form Indi-Max Telecom Ltd. (IMTL). With considerable competition already present in the vertical, IMTL started on a vigorous expansion and by September, 2008 established 80 stores in India with maximum store concentration in Mumbai, NCR & Pune. Most of the stores of IMTL were doing good business except the one in a location called Yamla in Hauz Qazi area of Lucknow. This specific IMTL store was located just 70 metres from the largest mobile phone and accessories flea marketplace in Lucknow called Gamma Market. This market has many shops which sell branded mobile phones at Rs. 200 Rs. 500 less than the MRP and upto Rs. 1000 or more less if the phone is purchased without a bill/receipt. For Accessories, the prices were still cheaper. In the organised sector, Yamla had one store of The Mobile Store which did average business from customers wary of the unorganised sector. As store manager of the Yamla store and owing to the complete bipolar market of the area, enumerate your plan of action on how you intend to draw customers into your store. There is a complete autonomy given to you by IMTL as they realise the importance of doing good business in a place like Yamla.

16. What is the matter???? Mr. Pyarelal, was a leading grocer in Matunga, a suberb of Mumbai until early 2002, when with the advent of convenience stores, they starting eating on the business of Mr. Pyarelal. It took him a considerable while to understand the functioning of the organised convenience store format retailers. In 2006, his son having graduated, Mr. Pyarelal decided to modernise his establishment. He purchased two shops adjacent to his and converted his old shop into a new avatar on the lines of the convenience stores in the neighbourhood. He had the interiors done at par with the competition stores. He had shelves installed for the groceries and a freezer for dairy products. Split air conditioners kept the store cool and welcoming. This change ignited the loyalties in his old customers and his business picked up. However, by end of 2006, Mr. Pyarelal was again fighting a lost batle to the convenience stores in the neighbourhood. He enquired from once his most loyal customer and a good friend as to why he did not visit his store

that often. His friend told Mr. Pyarelal that despite all the modern looks and amenities within the store, the one major drawback was the shabby merchandise and the way it was stacked in the store. Mr. Pyarelal, approached you, the students of RMM batch as you have recently made a name for yourself by executing successfully certain consultancy projects. Having listened to his problem, you have conducted a preliminary research and found a model that is suitable to tackle Mr. Pyarelal's problem. The model is as under:

F u n c t io n s U n it s C o m m u n ic a t io n
Come out with a solution for Mr. Pyarelal's predicament and become a champion consultant while still at school. >> As discussed in the problem the major set back for mr. Pyrelal is the shabby merchandise and the way of stacking. 1. The Merchandise to become shabby , the product handling in the Supply Chain Process as now in the age of competition one has to take extra care of handling products not just the product inside also its packing box but in totality as a damaged packaging box can be perceived as a damaged product leading to no sale. 2. When the Product reaches the store, the unloading and storage area of the products similar care has to be taken to keep the merchandise in a good condition. 3. At the store level the existing products can gather dust, they should be dusted and cleaned to maintain an optimum image of the store, as it is perceived as new and fresh by the customer. 4. Mr. Pyrelal can opt for a plannogram for stacking but if not a plannogram a basic categorization and displaying the products with proper number of facing to products and avoiding over stacking and keeping products in their particular categories only which causes less confusion, it looks organized and makes consumer buying process easier. 5. Assisting customers and providing equal or additional services to customer to ensure loyalty. 17. More, a supermarket retail format of the Aditya Birla group had a problem. After conducting a research on store loyalty, they identified that they have four kinds of customers. Look at the matrix given below and suggest strategies, as store manager to manage customers in each quadrant for the store. Store Patronage HIGH LOW

H Store I Loyalty G H L O W

LOW PATRONAGE HIGH LOYAlty HIGH PATRONAGE HIGH LOYALTY LOW PATRONAGE LOW LOYALTY

HIGH PATRONAGE
LOW LOYATY

18. Hypermart Fall of Footfall Having done a detailed market survey, Hypermart opened a store in outskirts of Jaipur in a recently developed mall which happens to be the largest mall in the state spread over 5.00 lac sqft. This was taking into consideration the development of residential properties in the immediate catchment. However it turns out while the residential property was developed but the occupation is very poor. With this scenarios the stores immediate catchment for 3Km is just only empty houses or filled with Sec C customer base which is not the base for Hypermart. Jaipur as a market itself is very orthodox and a price sensitive market. This market also includes other organized retail players who play to the price sensitive customers. Unlike Hypermart they do not believe in ambience, store standards or service. In this scenario how would Hypermart get the required footfall? What should be the strategy adopted to manage the competition?

19. Big Mall Retail war Big Mall launched their first store at thane in October last year. Being the largest Hypermarket it was quite confident that it would get the required footfall even though it was situated on the outskirts of Thane, away from the main city by 6km. It had two major catchment, one which was the in the distance of 6 Km and the other 12 km away. However it so happened that once the store was operational two Hypermarket formats and a specialty store specailising in electronics came up in the catchment which was in the vicinity of 6km. in the other catchment which was 12km away, a mall was developed which as part of its tenant mix has a Hypermarket as well as it has few speciality stores. All these were in direct competition with Big Mall. To worsen the situation there is a Flyover being constructed 2 km away in the catchment which is in the vicinity of 6km which is further an hindrance for the loyal customers of Big Mall. Being the General Manager of the store what would be your action plan to counter: The Competition Get the foot fall back which was lost to the competition during their launches Footfall loss due to the construction of flyover. 20. Technix Shocked by competition

Technix is an electronic division of Shopbig hypermarket. The strategy is to have two models of operations. One to operate as a shop-in-shop in all the Shobig hypermarket and two as stand alone stores. Technix deals in Consumer Durable and Information and Technology (CDIT). It so happens that wherever they are a stand alone they are operating profitably. However wherever they are operating in shop-in-shop format with Shopbig they have dropped sales badly and operating at 60% of the budget. This has been majorly due to : 1. Slump in the economy. 6. Direct and cut throat competition by other speciality CDIT players in the catchment which is the major reason 7. Grey Market In this scenario it is such that Technix cannot move out of the shop-in-shop concept as it is part of the overall business strategy. Being the Head Of CDIT what would be your direction to your team in terms of : Pricing Merchandise Mix Strategy for existing shop-in-shop and way forward ANS: Firstly it is clear that Technix wants a strategy of two models one stand alone and other the shop-in-shop format and function profitability. Technix first needs to secretively survey all its competitors within ShoBig, their merchandise mix, marketing in terms of offers , pricing etc. After studying all these aspects . Technix needs to create a differentiating factor , can carefully design their Merchandise mix and create a differentiating factor by including items which are not available with the competitors but Technix. Technix needs visibility in the store it operates and visibility in terms of offers and Visual Merchandising, creating the hype. Pricing: Lower prices can be achieved when buying is centralized and technix has a bargaining power as it will order is bulk. The lower price technix gets it can transfer the benefits to the customer. Strategy for existing shop-in-shop would be To provide customers with different merchandise than the its competitors. Create valuable offers for the customers such as discounts, discounts for loyal customers of technix , special day offers , product bundling etc. To have events/ promotional events for its customers . Contests , sweepstakes etc Providing services: Services- servicing existing customers old durables, extended warranty , exchange offers(old for new at discount), free home delivery and installation. These all things will separate techinix clearly from its competitors.