Recent Trend of Retail Business in Chhattisgarh: With Special Reference to Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh

The study throws light on how retailers are adopting organized retail formats to keep tempo with changing taste of customers shopping behaviors. The organised retail format is generally taken as those stores located in the malls. The market is growing rapidly and changes are occurring across the industry, which has positioned itself as an attractive destination.

The study concludes how the various factors affect the store level shopping decision. The study is based on primary data collected from retailers through structured questionnaire. The objective of the study is to draw an idea about trends of retail business in C.G. Bilaspur city is one of the important city of the state, hence selected for sample collection. A questionnaire was designed to investigate customer's preference of shopping decisions regarding various factors of stores. The data was collected from 20 retailers of Bilaspur (C.G.). Specifically grocery some of the grocery items are included in the study. Inclusion of whole range of grocery was not possible. Respondents were asked to explain their view of store on the basis of various factors. Variables are collected from the description given by retailers (respondents). The main factors on which retailers decide to go for particular type of retail store are Price of goods and commodity, Sales staff, Quality and variety of products, Other Services given by retailers.

It was found from the study that, customers are more comfortable in shopping from large format retailers than traditional retail stores. Traditional retailers are facing tough competition with large format retail stores in small cities.