David v/s Goliath: FOI/Organized Retail v/s SME Segment in India

Abstract

Consumers around the world continues broad efforts to save money while shopping for the consumer-packaged goods and with low prices and getting good value for money had been the highest priority, India is no exception too. The Indian SME segment played a very significant role in the overall Industrial development of India. With its agility and dynamism the sector has shown admirable innovativeness and adaptability to survive the recent recession and downturn. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been considered one of the 'driving forces' of modern economies due to their multifaceted contributions in terms of technological innovations, employment generation, export promotion, etc. Of these, the ability of SMEs to innovate assumes significance because innovation lends a competitive edge to firms, industries and ultimately, economies. Unorganized retail sector employs the second highest population in India just after the agriculture segment and they have already proved their sustainability and resilience over the domestic organized retail sector e.g. Big Bazaar, Pantaloon etc. Now this segment is poised to face the international retail giants’ heads on e.g. Wal-Mart, Tesco, Costco etc. India is emerging as the consumption giant next to China irrespective of the global market downturn and European Market meltdown. This exploratory research reviews the Indian Middle-Class segment known as the power-house of this huge consumption in Indian retail segment which in-turn would shape up the SME segment based upon the literature reviews and the consumer segmentation analysis with respect to the Vals2 scale and the relevance of organized retail vis-a-vis SME segment growth with the employment generation and the emergence of the Indian middle class segment.