Pest Analysis of Retail Industry in West Bengal

Retail Scenario in India : Touching Meteoric Scales As the corporates – the Piramals, the Tatas, the Rahejas, ITC, S.Kumar's, RPG Enterprises, and mega retailers- Crosswords, Shopper's Stop, and Pantaloons race to revolutionize the retailing sector, retail as an industry in India is coming alive. Retail sales in India amounted to about Rs.7400 billion in 2002, expanded at an average annual rate of 7% during 1999-2002. With the upturn in economic growth during 2003, retail sales are also expected to expand at a higher pace of nearly 10%. Across the country, retail sales in real terms are predicted to rise more rapidly than consumer expenditure during 2003-08. The forecast growth in real retail sales during 2003- 2008 is 8.3% per year, compared with 7.1% for consumer expenditure. Modernization of the Indian retail sector will be reflected in rapid growth in sales of supermarkets, departmental stores and hypermarts. Sales from these large-format stores are to expand at growth rates ranging from 24% to 49% per year during 2003-2008, according to a latest report by Euromonitor International, a leading provider of global consumer-market intelligence. A. T. Kearney Inc. places India 6th on a global retail development index. The country has the highest per capita outlets in the world - 5.5 outlets per 1000 population. Around 7% of the population in India is engaged in retailing, as compared to 20% in the USA. In a developing country like India, a large chunk of consumer expenditure is on basic necessities, especially food-related items. Hence, it is not surprising that food, beverages and tobacco accounted for as much as 71% of retail sales in 2002. The share of food-related items had, however, declined over the review period, down from 73% in 1999. This is not unexpected, because with income growth, Indians, like consumers elsewhere, have started spending more on non-food items compared with food products. Sales through supermarkets and