Small Retailer - Co-opted by both the Organized Retail and Companies .

Coming back to the issue of how the small retailer is getting influenced by the impact of the emergence of large organized retail. As I had written earlier retailers like Reliance want to become a supplier to the small mom-and-pop stores in the vicinity of their retail shop. The main aim would be to achieve economies-of-scale in their operations sooner than it would be possible by selling to the final end consumer. The secondary aim would be find a bigger market for their own private brands.
The second initiative which has been taken from the manufacturers like HLL is the concept of Super Value Stores (SVS), wherein prominent and bigger of the mom and pop stores have being identified by HLL and the company is providing them with special promotional schemes and offers and merchandising support. HLL wants to co-opt these bigger retailer who contribute close to 70 percent of retail sales in an given area.
Added to these initiatives in the brand equity there was an article on how companies are targeting the chemist’s shops for more focused selling of their health related products. P&G is coming with a special campaign for their Vicks range; HLL is trying to buy shelf space in the chemist’s shops to put up special counters for their health related products. Even the small pan shops in a city are being exclusively targeted by many companies and at one point in time companies like Cadburys had appointed exclusive distributors for their low-priced products, who would be servicing these pan shops and other smaller retailers.
Cooperatives like Amul are going into retailing in their own way; they are aggressively starting 'Amul Parlors'. The aim is to have a substantial part of their turnover from these parlors so that in the future they are able to off-set the problems of increasing bargaining power of the organized retailers.
With the demand for reality market and the key locations being vied by every retailer, some of the smaller shops have actually opted to sell-off their property to these the bigger organized retailers. Which actually might turn out to be a good strategy in the short run as it will sometime before the industry stabilizes, in terms of number of players and competition.
Thus with the rapidly changing scenario I personally am bullish on the survival of the small retail shops , though they will have to respond to the challenges posed by the organized retail by becoming more responsive in service and innovate their age old way of doing business.