Indian Retail Industry -Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd.- Two Basic Forms of Retailers (Part II)

Differential between High-End & Low-End Retail Industry Cultures

In order to gain the desired market share organizations need to successfully position their offerings (products and/or services) in the market. Positioning strongly influences the process of strategy development in terms of marketing mix as well as other marketing decisions, and may be defined as “a process that influences potential customers’ overall perception of a brand, product line, or organization in general” (Lamb, Hair, Jr., & McDaniel, 2008, pp.225). Organizations also make use of perceptual mapping – as illustrated in the figure appended below – that may be conceptualized as “a means of displaying or graphing, in two or more dimensions, the location of products, brands, or groups of products in customers’ minds” (Lamb, Hair, Jr., & McDaniel, 2008, pp.226).

The various bases on which position decisions are taken consist of (1) attribute, (2) price, (3) quality, (4) use/application, (5) product user, (6) product class, (7) competitor and (8) emotion. Without discussing each of these bases in detail, only two of them, viz. quality and price will be taken into consideration in order to throw light upon the high-end and low-end retail industry cultures. Saxena (2005) has opined that “while low end products were price driven, the high end ones were powered by brand image” (Saxena, 2005, pp.71). He has further observed that “one of the strategic decisions that a marketer or retail marketer has to take is one concerning the positioning of the store”, and in this context it has been opined by him that “the choice is whether to locate it at the low or high end of the retail continuum” (Saxena, 2005, pp.485). The two factors that are taken into consideration in order to establish the said continuum are “the breadth of product line and value addition provided by the store through a range of services offered by it” (Saxena, 2005, pp.485). The figure appended below illustrates the positions that may be occupied by retail stores.

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