A Project Report

On

“Understanding shopper’s behaviour and evaluation of customer

experience at selected store of Reliance Retail”

Undertaken at

Project Report Submitted to

Balaji Institute of International Business (BIIB), Pune

In partial fulfillment of PGDM (Marketing) Curriculum for Academic year

By

PRASHANT KUMAR PANDEY

( IB1816252)

under the Supervision of

Mr. Vimal D Patel

(Chief Manager, Reliance Retail ltd)

Reliance Retail Ltd.

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 Certificate

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 Declaration

I, Prashant Kumar, student of Balaji Institute of International Business (BIIB),

Pune hereby declare that this project entitled “Understanding shopper behavior and
evaluation of customer experience at selected store of Reliance Retail” is a bonafide
record of work done by me during the course of summer internship project work of
PGDM program and all contents and facts are prepared and presented by me without any
error and bias.
I also declare that it has not previously formed the basis for the award to me for any
degree/diploma associate ship, fellowship or other similar title, of any Institute/ Society.

Place: Pune

Date:

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 Acknowledgement

It gives me a great pleasure to express my gratitude to Reliance Retail Ltd.

Bilaspur for allowing me to undergo Summer Internship Project Program in their
reputed organization.

I would like to thank my mentor Mr. Vimal D Patel who in spite of his heavy
schedule has shown a genuine interest in providing necessary guidance.

I would also like to thank Mr.Biju Pillai (Director- BIIB) for providing
information and internal guidance whenever required.

Lastly, I would like to thank my institution and faculty members, for helping me
to convert this project into a reality.

Regards,
Prashant Kumar Pandey

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

S.NO topic PAGE NO.

1 Executive summary 6

2 Contextual background 7

3 Role in the Company 13

4 Research problem 14

5 Objectives 15

6 Research Hypothesis 16

7 Literature review 17

8 Research methodology 18

9 Data analysis 20

10 Findings 28

11 Recommendation 29

12 Limitations 30

13 Conclusion 31

14 References 32

15 Appendix 33

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 Executive summary

The study aims to understand the behaviour and evaluate the perception of customers
for the product and services provided at Reliance Digital from the house of Reliance
Retail and enable the “Reliance Digital” operators to respond to customer’s desires.
The research objectives were:

➢ To determine demographics profile of the respondents.

➢ To identify perceptions among customers towards Reliance Digital.

➢ To test whether Significant Differences Existed between Respondents

Perceptions with respect to their age, working status and times of visit.

➢ To determine factors that influence customers to visit Reliance Digital.

The data for this research was collected through the use of a questionnaire which was
conducted between May 08, 2019 and June 30, 2019. The sample size of 101 was set
for the survey.

The outcome of the study revealed significant factors regarding the demographic
nature of the target market as well as their perceived perceptions towards Reliance
Digital. The study itself functions as a valuable managerial and operation
development tool, affording operators the opportunity to improve their service
quality.

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 Contextual Background

Retailing is derived from the French word “retaille” which means: “To cut off a
piece or to break bulk”
Retailing consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a
department store, boutique or kiosk, or by post, in small or individual lots for direct
consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as
delivery. Purchasers may be individuals or businesses. A "retailer" buys goods or
products in large quantities from manufacturers or importers, either directly or through
a wholesaler, and then sells smaller quantities to the end-users / consumers. Retail
establishments are often called shops or stores. Retailers are at the end of the supply
chain. Manufacturing marketers see the process of retailing as a necessary part of their
overall distribution strategy. The term "retailer" is also applied where a service provider
services the needs of a large number of individuals, such as a public utility, like electric
power.

2.1 Industry Scenario

The Indian retail industry is generally divided into organized and unorganized
retailing:

 Organized retailing: The Organized retailing refers to the trading activities

undertaken by licensed retailers that is those who registered themselves for sales
tax ,income tax ,etc. These include the corporate –backed hypermarkets and
retail chains and also the privately owned large businesses

 Unorganized retailing: Indian retail is dominated by a large number of small

retailers consisting of the local kirana shops, owner-manned general stores, etc.
This is traditional form of low cost retailing.

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 Market Scenario

 In the past few years, Indian Retail sector has seen tremendous growth in the
organized segment. Major domestic players have stepped into the retail arena
with long term, ambitious plans to expand their business across verticals, cities
and formats.
 Companies like Tata, Reliance, Adani Enterprise and Bharti have been investing

considerably in the booming Indian Retail market. Along with these giant
retailers, a number of transnational brands have also entered into the market to
set up retail chains in close association with bigger Indian companies.

Key drivers of the Indian Retail Industry

 Emergence of nuclear families

 An increase in the double-income households trend
 Large working population
 Reasonable Real estate prices
 Increase in disposable income and customer aspiration
 Demand as well as increase in expenditure for luxury items
 Growing preference for branded products and higher aspirations
 Growing liberalization of the FDI policy in the past decade
 Increasing urbanization

Growth of retail industry in India

According to panel members at the seventh Food and Grocery Forum India, the
opportunities in food and grocery retail in India are immense, given that it constitutes
about 69 per cent of India’s total retail market. The Indian retail market, currently
estimated at $490 billion, is project to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 6
per cent to reach $865 billion by 2023. Modern retail with a penetration of only 5% is
expected to grow about six times from the current 27 billion USD to 220 billion USD,
across all categories and segments.

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 Service Studied

Retail stores attract customers not only with appropriate products and reasonable
prices, but also by offering services that enhance the whole purchasing experience.
Three levels of retail services are

Self-Service – In this service, customers perform most or all of the service activities
associated with the purchasing process. Some customers considers self-service as a
benefit while other consider this as an inconvenience. There are two types in self-
service method

1. Self-selection services, such as vending machine purchases or supermarket

purchasing

2. Self-checkout services where the in store employee help the consumer in

selecting the product but checkout process needs to be carried out by the
consumer

Assorted-Service –some level of service is offered to consumers. It includes handling

the point-of-sale transaction; assisting in product selection; providing different
payment options; offering delivery; and many more.

Full-Service – The full-service retailer attempts to handle nearly all aspects of the
purchase right from helping the consumer in selecting the product through the
payment options. A retailer who follows a full-price strategy often adapts the full-
service approach as a way of adding more value to a customer’s purchase.

Full service retail stores employs qualified, customer-friendly and informative sales
force along with a wide range of desired goods at highly reasonable retail prices.

Reliance Retail ltd ensures that all its retail store employees are trained properly to
handle the customer queries .It provides a plethora of information to the consumers
about the product thus helping them in making an informed decision. The store
employees assist the consumers in every phase of their buying process.

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Competitor analysis

Launched in 2006, Croma was the first one-of-its kind large format specialist retail store
that catered to all multi-brand digital gadgets and home electronic needs in India. Over a
decade since its inception, Croma has almost become synonyms for all electronics needs,
with its tech-savvy staff, product range, online presence and the will to help customers.

Chroma Multimedia is a digital media house that specializes in mobile

application development, web design, photography and video.

A1teleshop is seen as one of Reliance Digital Stores's top competitors. A1teleshop is a

Private company that was founded in null in , . A1teleshop is in the Retail Distributors
field. Compared to Reliance Digital Stores, A1teleshop has NaN fewer employees.

Hellokart is one of Reliance Digital Stores's top competitors. Hellokart's headquarters is

in Paris, Other, and was founded in 2014. Hellokart operates in the Personal Products
industry. Hellokart generates 8% of Reliance Digital Stores's revenue.

Vijay Sales is an Indian electronics retail store chain based out of Mumbai. It is
headquartered in Jogeshwari, Mumbai.[1] Vijay Sales was started as a small TV
showroom at Mahim by Nanu Gupta in 1967.[2] It currently operates 82 stores across the
states of Maharashtra, Haryana, UP, Gujarat and Delhi.[3] and has more than 5,000
Products to choose and is located in prime location all over India and has 31 stores
in Mumbai, 12 stores in Pune, 15 stores in Gujarat, 15 stores in Delhi, 5 stores
in Haryana, 4 stores in Uttar Pradesh.

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Company Profile:

Reliance was established as a textile concern in the year 1966 by Dhirubhai H. Ambani.
This company followed a diversification strategy since its inception. It vertically
integrated. This resulted in formation of many subsidiaries. Reliance Retail is one such
subsidiary. Since its inception in 2006, Reliance Retail has grown to cater to millions of
customers, and thousands of farmers and vendors. Reliance Retail serves over 3.5 million
customers every week, and its loyalty programme, Reliance One, has the patronage of more
than 30 million customers. Reliance Retail has adopted a multi-prong strategy and operates
neighborhood stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, wholesale cash & carry stores, specialty
stores and online stores and has democratized access to all types of products and services
across all segments for all Indian consumers. Reliance Retail has emerged as the partner of
choice for international brands and has established exclusive partnerships with many
revered international brands such as Diesel, Superdry, Hamleys, Ermenegildo Zegna,
Marks and Spencer, Paul & Shark, Thomas Pink, Kenneth Cole, Brooks Brothers, Steve
Madden, Payless Shoesource, Grand Vision and many more. Reliance Retail operates over
3,300 stores pan India with nearly 13 million square feet of retail space and is growing
rapidly.. The Reliance Retail was found in the year 2006 as an operating subsidiary. It has
its head office in Mumbai, India. RRL launched its first store in November 2006 through
its convenience store format ‘Reliance Fresh’. RRL launched its first ‘Reliance Digital’
store in April 2007 and its first and India’s largest hypermarket ‘Reliance Mart’ in
Ahmedabad in August 2007. This year, RRL has also launched its first few specialty stores
for apparel 0(Reliance Trends), footwear (Reliance Footprints), jewellery (Reliance
Jewels), books, music and other lifestyle products (Reliance Timeout), auto accessories
and service format (Reliance Autozone), and also an initiative in the health and wellness
business through ‘Reliance Wellness’. In each of these store formats, RRL is offering a
unique set of products and services at a value price point that has not been available so far
to the Indian consumer. Overall, RRL is well positioned to rapidly expand its existing
network of 590 stores which operate in 57 cities.

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  Reliance DIGITAL

Discover, Experience and Buy a range of products at Reliance Digital.
Discover 150 international and national brands and over 4000 products.
Experience the best potential of each product in an ambience that simulates
your life style. Not only do we enable you to make an intelligent buying
decision, but also offer complete product life cycle support – ResQ – our
proprietary advisory and post-sales support service.


 Top brands and wide range of products

Choose products from the best of brands –from Sony, LG in Home

Entertainment, and Nokia, Samsung in mobile phones, to Panasonic, and
Toshiba in Home Appliances. Discover products that best suit your lifestyle
needs and provides best value for money in terms of TCO (total cost of
ownership).

 Experience the Digital Zone


Touch, feel and try every product before you make your BUY decision! Get Up,
Close and Personal with the latest products in our specially designed Experience
Zones for high-end entertainment systems like home theatres, televisions, home
and car music systems. These zones simulate an environment that brings the best
of each product alive – thereby guiding you to make the right choice.

 After sales service and support

Bought that big Digital TV and don't know where best to place it in the room? Or
have a device malfunction/breakdown and hassled about setting it right? Be it
product installation, break down or maintenance - Trust ResQ to bail you out! Our
ResQ personnel shall personally visit, rectify, and provide you with a step-by-step
guidance for maintenance till the life cycle of the product. ResQ services are
available to support 7 days a week, from 10 A.M to 10 P.M

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 Role in the Company

As an intern , I was assigned the role of understanding shopper behaviour and

customer experience. For this purpose , I was supposed to interact with the
customers and interview them with the help of structured questionnaire. We
were asked to conduct an interview which was an exit interview. We were
assigned the task to visit all the respective stores format wise and certain time
was allotted to the interns. We were send to the stores like like digital,
footprint ,trends ,market , jio store , etc.

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Research Problem

The purpose of the study is to identify the demographic profile of the customers, their
perception towards Reliance Digital. Moreover, to identify the most important factors
that influences customers to visit Reliance Digital. However, Reliance Digital has gained
good grip on market, but still want to increase the walk-in in Reliance Digital by defining
a holistic Reliance retail customer experience. So the main need for the study is to know
how to increase the walk-ins.

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 Objectives

Primary Objective


To understand shopper behaviour and customer experience (at Reliance digital
in Bilaspur city).

Secondary Objective


To determine demographics profile of the respondents.


To identify perceptions among customers towards Reliance Digital.


To test whether Significant Differences Existed between Respondents
Perceptions with respect to their age, working status and times of visit.


To determine factors that influence customers to visit Reliance Digital.

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 Research Hypothesis

H0-There is no relationship between customer’s first visit at the store and the basis of
their overall experience they will shop again at this store.

H1-There is a relationship between customer’s first visit at the store and the basis of
their overall experience they will shop again at this store.

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 Literature Review

Parikh (2006) said that “As organized retailing develops in India, retail stores in India
will have to improve the quality of their services significantly in order to compete
successfully in the global marketplace. It is, therefore very important to know how
customers evaluate service quality and what can be done to measure and improve it.”

William & Prabakar (2012) concluded that “The customer perception of retail service
quality is an important segment to the emerging and the existing retailers in the market
as the study reveals that perception of service quality influenced by the various nature
with various customers even some of the general factors like Personal interaction,
physical aspects are the dimensions on the customer perception remains constant and
common to all the customer on a majority basis so the retail outlets have to frame their
own strategies In order to attract the customers on a longer basis”

Kumar.R & Barani (2012) said that “service quality has long been accepted as the
most basic Marketing tool for retailers to differentiate their retail offers, create
competitive advantage and to enhance the customers‟ shopping experience.
Nonetheless, maintaining excellent service quality within the stores is no simple task”

Hekman David R., Aquino Karl, Owens Bradley P., Mitchell Terence R.

Leavitt Pauline Schilpzand Keith (2010), In this research, researcher have found the
result that, customer satisfaction surveys have become a common source of
performance feedback for employees and organizations. Researchers had given some
new aspects that customer satisfaction was primary factor for the companies this time
for strategic decision making and to find some factors for compensation of employees.
Customer satisfaction in most of cases were gender biased they had found because this
mainly attach with the behavior of people and performance which is always related to
gender wise.

B. Kamaladevi (2010), they have found the survival of fittest & fastest is the mantra
of today’s business game. To compete successfully in this business era, the retailer must
focus on the customer’s buying experience. To manage a customer’s experience,
retailers should understand what “customer experience” actually means. Finally; in
conclusion there are some fundamental points: Customer Experience Management is
not simply an old idea in a new wrapper. The result was that there are now more services
and products available than at any time in the past, yet customer satisfaction are on a
downward slide.

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 Research Methodology
In this report both exploratory and Descriptive research designs are used.

Scope of the study

The study aims to find out how customers perceive the Reliance Digital
store. One mistake can have far-reaching effects on future as well as
current customers. So it is very essential to find out the customer
satisfaction and their expectation from Reliance Digital. If any
dissatisfaction exists so that remedial measures can be undertaken to
improve their store.

Sample Design
Sampling Technique: Random
Sample Size– 101
Research Instrument Design-
To test the objectives of the study, a survey was used to collect data for
the study. The survey questionnaire was comprised of three sections:
The first section included general information such as gender,
age, and working Status etc.; the second section was titled
“Perceptions toward Reliance Digital”. This part was
designed to understand participants’ perceptions toward
Digital There were fourteen Likert-scale questions and one
open-ended question for
Participants to identify their perceptions toward the store; & the third part
generally identified the important factors which influence customers to
visit at store and on the basis of their overall experience will they visit this
store again.

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 Data collection method

Primary data: The primary or the first hand data was collected with
the help of handing out the questionnaire to the customers as well
interviewing the customers.

Secondary data: The major source of secondary or supporting

data was internet, library and the books and journals. These were
the sources of information.

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 DATA ANALYSIS
Testing of Hypothesis:

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Interpretation

Since the p-value is smaller than our chosen significance level (α = 0.05), we
reject the null hypothesis. Hence, we conclude that there is enough evidence to
suggest an association between customers’ first visit at the store and on the basis
of their overall experience they will shop again at this store.

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 Q.1 Gender of the respondent.

Interpretation

From the following data we conclude that 83% of respondents are male i.e. 84
and 17% are female i.e. 17

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Interpretation

The above graph shows that the age group 26-35 are mostly the visitors who visit
the store frequently as they belong to more no. of the respondents i.e. 42%

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Q.3 First visitor or Repeater

Visitors Frequency Percentage

First time 26 26%
Repeater 75 74%

Interpretation

The above graph shows that 75% of the Visitors have visited the store before and
26% of the visitor have visited the store for the first time.

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Q.4 Respondents come alone or in a group.

Accompaniment Frequency Percentage

Alone 49 48%
In a group 52 51%

Accompaniment
Alone In a group

49%
51%

Interpretation

According to the given chart 49% of the respondents come alone while 51% of
the respondents come in group.

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Interpretation

The above graph shows the satisfaction with their shopping experience.
52% of the respondents are very satisfied while 1% are very dissatisfied.

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Interpretation
From the above graph we conclude that quality is the most important factor as out
of 101 respondents 76 are very satisfied with quality while second most
important factor is range as out of 101 respondents 66 are very satisfied with the
range of product.

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 Findings

a. As per the data analysed it is observed that 83% of respondents are male
i.e. 84 and 17% are female i.e. 17.
b. As per the data analysed it is observed that 52% of the respondents
comes with a group which makes the whole group as your potential
customer.
c. As per the data analysed 52% of the customers are highly satisfied with
the shopping experience ,where as 38% satisfied, 4% have neutral
experience, 5% of the customers are dissatisfied and 1% of the customer
is very dissatisfied with the service provided to him.
d. The customers are satisfied with the wide range of product offered by the
Reliance Digital.

e. More customers are concerned about the quality of the product so it is

one of the most important factor for the customers.

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 Recommendations

➢ Sales team should be well known with the different range of products as
it is one of the most important factor for a customer.
➢ The company should also provide proper training to the sales team so
they provide proper demonstration to the customer.

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 Limitations

 Good and bad mood of customers or respondents that was experienced

during study that would have influenced their responses.
 Normally all customers were seemed in hurry because of their busy schedule
so questionnaire also would have influenced their response.
 Some customers don’t bother about giving feedback and they don’t Provide
proper information .
 This survey is limited only for Bilaspur region.
 Time period of the project provided may not be enough to understand the
problem.

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 Conclusion
I conclude the study stating that the customers of Reliance DIGITAL are satisfied
with Product quality and its range, cleanliness, relaxed atmosphere or ambience,
monetary factor but they still need good service in future days. And the factors
which we need focus to improve is customer walk-in. The Consumers prefer range
of products as the important factor that satisfies their overall shopping experience.
It’s the main challenge to Reliance DIGITAL to attract the customers towards them
from other organized stores such as Croma and Vijay Sales by defining a holistic
Reliance retail customer experience. we conclude that there is enough evidence to
suggest an association between customers’ first visit at the store and on the basis
of their overall experience they will shop again at this store.

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 References/ Sources

 John William & S. Prabakar (2012), A Study on Customer Perception

on Retail Service Quality In Select Organized Retail Stores in


 India. International Journal of Computing and Business Research (ISSN:
2229-6166) Vol 3 Issue 1 Jan 2012 pp 1-15

 Kamaladevi, B. (2010). Customer Experience Management in
Retailing. Business Intelligence Journal - January, Vol.3 No.1.

 https://relianceretail.com/

 https://www.owler.com/company/reliancedigitalstore

 https://relianceretail.com/reliance-digital.html

 https://www.ibef.org/

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