What are the 5 major types of retail formats?

Some of the important emerging retail formats are listed below

1. Van/Mobile Van Retailing:

This is a compromise between door to door selling and store selling. In this type of retail business, retailer keeps one day stock of his merchandise and goes to an area to serve its permanent customers. Sometimes retailers visit some areas which are totally new to them to attract new customers. The kind of products sold in Van retailing can range from everyday household products to different kinds of eatables. The various van goods include soaps, detergents, kitchen appliances, scrubbers, and several other cleaning products.

There are some vans which designed to operate at extremely low temperatures. In these types of van customers will find all kinds of in frozen food such as vegetables, meat, dairy products, and ice. In the rural areas this kind of selling of goods still exists though it is not quite popular in metropolitan cities. In some states van retailing may be subject to regulations and entail licensing. State regulations determine the area that van sales can cover and the products that are allowed to be sold.

Van retailing is usually found in remote/rural areas and is of two types:

(a) Static retailing: Under this sort of retailing, such vans are parked in public areas where customer traffic is usually high. The items sold under static retailing are snacks and junk food.

(b) Raving retailing is where retailer takes his van to one house to another, selling merchandise to customers at their doorstep.

2. Conference/Party/Event Retailing:

In this sort of retailing, retailer invite people from nearby localities and after describing positive aspects of the merchandise, sells it. These types of get together/events are organized by the franchisor (retailer) belonging to a big organization. The products sold under such form of retailing vary from cosmetics from small household items that are of low cost.

In order to attract customers, retailer usually distributes sample merchandise or gives some demonstration regarding effective use of his items offered on sale. Event retailing usually takes place on national or regional level events such as Valentine Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Diwali, etc. Gold retailing on the day of ‘Akshaya Tritiya’ in most of the parts of the country is one of such example of event retailing.

Some events are food related like Annual Mango festival at Pragati Maidan, Delhi organized by Delhi Tourism in collaboration with Delhi Government. Further food festivals, special food offers being offered on the occasion of ‘Karva Chauth and Navratra in India are none other than event retailing.

3. Distant Retailing:

As the very name suggests, under distant retailing, a customer place the order from a remote location by telephone, SMS, internet, pager etc, instead of visiting a store. Retailers who provide such home delivery facility may/may not have physical stores. The leading global retailers who follow such practice are Amazon, Wal- Mart, Arkay Hygiene.

The main advantage of such sort of retiling is that any type of item can be supplied by the retailer on demand. The range of items offered depends on the customers’ demand, and retailers’ resources and the infrastructure of the concerned region.

4. Forecourt Retailing:

A new emerging concept in retailing is the establishments of stores in front of large buildings of high traffic areas. This concept caught public attention with oil companies trying to allow private companies to set up convenience stores at their fuel station outlets. The aggressive players in this area are HPCL, IOC, BPCL and Reliance.

According to a Business Standard report, Vishal Mega Mart has tied up with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) for opening forecourt retail stores chain, which has been branded as “Vishal Corner Mart” will set up convenience stores at fuel station outlets of HPCL. These marts besides offering convenience goods and services would also provide travel solutions and other facilities as a ‘one stop solution’.

Previously, Apollo Pharmacy had tied up and set up ‘convenio’ stores at Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) petrol pump outlets for supplying groceries and medicines. This experiment was well appreciated by business critics but it did not succeed, perhaps, on account of problems in revenue sharing model. Similarly Kishore Biyani-led Future group had also tied up with IOC to set up fuel pumps in Big Bazaar premises and Big Bazaar stores in IOC premises. However, nothing seems to have emerged so far.

5. Trade Parks:

Retailing through trade parks is a recent retail practice and is practiced only in metres and big cities. Under this concept, business complexes are being set up for promotion of retail trade especially the international trade. Some of the examples are India Exposition Mart set up by Handicraft Export Promotion Council in Greater Noida, International Home Deco Park (IHDP) set up by a group of private investors in Noida and World Trade Park coming up in Jaipur. IHDP plans to provide International buyers ready access to approximately sixty world class Indian exporters belonging to Home Furnishings segment.

This effort of IHDP would be beneficial to buyers as they would not have to go to remote towns to see the designs and samples of exporters. Exporters apart from getting increased visibility will also get other facilities such as design library, design studio, forwarding services and so on. The parks are built to promote trade and are open to international buyers and buying houses only.