Dr P. R. Datta
We are living in an era of rapid changes in which customers behavioural patterns are changing continuously. The various market stimuli influence customers’ expectations, and merely increasing customer satisfaction is no longer a viable option for retailers to ensure business success. Customers no longer want to be treated as a mere customer; instead, they would like to be valued, engaged, respected, appreciated, and feel important in the business environment’s realm, being a main stakeholder’s group. Therefore, they want to be delighted not merely satisfied. Suppose you can go beyond satisfaction, generate something new, a unique USP or create an extraordinary customer demand with an innovative touch. In that case, you are the best in the race. Survival of the fittest is the norm of the competition. What is customer delight? A positive, engaging and appreciating service to the customers that exceeds customer expectation can create customer delight. A delighted customer will be more committed and show better emotional and rational bonds with the organisation, leading to high customer loyalty.
The food retail industry is dynamic and massive; it has been undergoing rapid changes throughout the world since the early 1990s due to globalisation, technological advancement, and consumers’ convenient seeking attitudes. In North America and Europe, consumers have witnessed the emergence of supermarkets, hypermarkets, and mega supermarkets as the dominant retail form. The large retailers have developed a new form of shopping experience by introducing self-service and best service quality provisions to the customers on the one hand and the other hand, customers have readily embraced this new high street phenomenon with enthusiasm. Since then, the whole landscape of food retailing has steadily been changed. Customers are looking for better quality products at lower prices, in essence, good value for money. Convenient payment methods, varieties of branded products, parking facilities, convenient locations, and other service and product-related factors have contributed to consumer behaviour changes. Additional factors such as car ownership, the expansion of the middle classes with greater financial freedom and stable employment have also contributed to their development. To fulfil consumer demands and expectations, food retailers continuously shape their business model, services, and products. They are striving to bring appealing products and services to the customer to maximise their satisfaction and meet (and where possible, exceed) their level of expectations.
European and North American superstore retailers have influenced many of the world developments in superstore retailing for the past three decades since the disintegration of Soviet Union in the 1990s and start of the new phase of Globalisation and Trade Liberalisation. The concept of supermarkets has been rapidly spreading from developed economies to developing and emerging economies since then. Many established European retailers invest in Asian countries and have expanded their operations in Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, India, and other Eastern and South Asian countries. Grocery food retailing is one of the critical areas of focus in those markets. They primarily offer food items such as fresh meat, fish, produce and bakery products, and dry and non-perishable food.
Supermarket diffusion in developing countries has occurred at a rapid pace. As a result, we are witnessing the current form of food retailing in Bangladesh that started in early 2000. Agora is the first to introduce such a retail outlet in Bangladesh, a champion of creating customer convenience and retail innovation. According to Superstores Owners Association, there are over 130 organised superstores in Bangladesh in 2019 and mainly being dominated by three major players-Agora, Swapna and Meena Bazar. Various bodies of evidence indicate that while Agora is still a substantial player in quality and innovation, with its extensive nationwide network and reputation for value for money pricing, Swapna holds the position as Bangladesh’s leading supermarket chain.
Several customer-driven factors are linked with the current challenges of grocery food retailing including economic fluctuations, changes in consumers’ lifestyle, demographic characteristics, eating habits, more conducive shopping behaviour, access to a wide range of better quality imported and branded products, the rapid growth of urbanisation, and an expanding middle class with greater car ownership and higher disposable incomes. Individual attitudes towards shopping behaviour are also affected by various social factors that influence consumers. These changes will continue to increase the influence of the grocery food retailing sector. Therefore, retailers must build and maintain a loyal customer base and increase customer delight to maintain a competitive advantage. Supermarkets provide a completely new experience to the consumer with a sophisticated customer service offering, a wide range of products, pleasant ambience, spacious layout, quality imported and branded products, and perceived western ways of shopping for daily necessities that help maintain a particular lifestyle.
Furthermore, the sense of community or at least its legacy is powerful in Bangladesh. Some of these communal bonds are borne out of hardship, other out of religious affiliation. Place and identity are significant for a people who paid an enormous price to liberate themselves in the 1970s, and this struggle has left an indelible mark. Even city dwellers, especially those in Dhaka, feel an affinity with their rural roots and heritage. When major religious festivals come around, especially the likes of Eid at the end of Ramadan the capital city appears to empty as people return to the village with which they retain familial contact. In such towns, people know each other and thus establish or renew bonds with local retailers. Shopping is an almost daily phenomenon and is a social activity as it is an act of necessity. Relationship Marketing is integral to this and has been a critical facet in forging mutual trust down the ages. So strong indeed have been the bonds forged that customers could access credit, with retailers confident that societal and communal pressures would result in shoppers honouring their commitments. Retailers of every size had needed to take note of their collective standing and thus have been active in the field of CRM before it was ever fully codified as a business practice. In the last decade or so, those who have established more modern concerns in Dhaka are still imbued with similar attitudes and are mindful of those customers, whilst they may be more affluent and outward-looking share similar expectations to those in previous generations.
Therefore, to sustain and stay in the race and optimise various opportunities, there are no alternative other than customer delight. Adaptation and developing a top-quality, supportive service culture is paramount. The world is changing rapidly due to many external factors as well as customer tastes and desire. Scanning and understanding customer expectations are the golden key for retailers who want to ensure customer delight. Many Western organisations are into trouble, and some are now history, as they failed to keep up with and satisfy customer needs and change shopping patterns.
Although superstore retailing sector is developing continuously, it is of paramount importance for the retailers to create and adopt a holistic customer delight strategic model, which can incorporate attributes such as service quality, bonds, trust, commitment, satisfaction, and customer loyalty. These simple business strategies will help these developing superstores to enter a new era of development. Offering customers quality goods and upgraded service levels will help them achieve higher customer delight levels, which is much easier to accomplish in less economically developed countries due to the barrier having been set relatively low. Repeat customers and a clear hierarchy in the organisational structure will push the superstore-retailing sector into having a smoother means of sourcing goods from trustworthy suppliers, due to the level of quality they must adhere to.
To manage and improve the customer shopping experience and maintain competitive organisational positioning, retailers should implement the most critical service quality dimensions. This may include giving employees sufficient training on approaching and dealing with customer inquiries and providing a service that is uniform and routinely of a high standard. Such a requirement will further cause the business to invest and hopefully reap the rewards in the long term.
The Writer is Executive Chair, Centre for Business & Economic Research, UK
