Customer Satisfaction towards Innovative Retail Marketing Strategy of Kerala State Co-operative Consumers Federation

Abstract

The retail landscape of India is witnessing a sea change and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail sector is a reality now. In India for a quite long time retail sector was mainly dominated by the sole proprietors. After liberalization, many companies came in to picture and trying their level best to play an active role in the urban consumer market. The British model of consumer cooperatives was introduced in India during the colonial rule. The three tier federal structure of consumer cooperatives viz., primary consumer cooperatives at the village level, and district cooperative wholesale stores at the district level and the Federation at the state level tried to solve the problems of consumers in the country. Unfortunately, the primary consumer cooperatives and district cooperative wholesale stores failed to fulfill the requirement of the consumers in many states. In the state of Kera/a too, only the Kera/a State Co-operative Consumers' Federation (Consumerfed) is working good with 216 Triveni retail stores, 9 mobile Trivenis, 7,f/,oating Trivenis, 9 Triveni Coffee Houses, 94 Neethi Medical Stores and 46 Foreign Liquor shops. These innovative retail chains of consumer stores are playing a vital role in Kera/a to stabilize the price of consumer goods and ensure the availability of essential commodities to the poor. With this background, an attempt was made to study the customer satisfaction towards the.functioning ofTriveniretail stores. The primary data were collectedfro.m 4 standing stores, 2 mobile stores and one floating store. A pre-tested interview schedul.! was administered among 80 respondents ensuring minimum.of ten from each store, who have volunteered to respond at the point of purchase. The . variables such as age, sex, religion, place of residence, education, primary occupation, income, purchase pattern, expenditure pattern, frequency of purchase, items purchased, purpose of vis it to the stores viz., to purchase general or subsidized goods, problems faced during purchase, awareness about new projects of the Consumerfed were studied. The consumer satisfaction was studied with 15 variables namely convenience, ambience, atmosphere, store hours, packaging, promotion, advertisements, varieties, quality of the products, product display, replacement of defective goods, retail spacing, time taken to purchase, price, customer service by using scaling techniques. The composite index was also calculated and it was 84. 05 percent. The index ranges from 58. 25 to 9 5. 2 5 percent. The least score for their promotional act,ivities and the best was for the i<Jwest price in the area. The results show that the youths below the age of 20 were not visiting the stores, 48.8 percent of respondents were female, 60 percent were Hindus, 73.8 percent were rural customers, no illiterates, 42.5 percent were housewives, 61 percent visits to purchase subsidized goods, 57.5 percent respondents monthly income was between Rs.10000 and 20000 and also they spent more for food items, 71. 25 percent respondents were living as nuclear family. The retail innovation .such as Floating and Mobile Triveni stores has made the life easy for the people living nearer to the backwaters and to the tribes.