A Study on Problems Faced by the Consumers and Retailers in Modern and Traditional Retail Store Outlets in India

The organized fruits and vegetables retailing is gaining momentum in the country as a result of increased share of consumer expenditure on fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables form a major category of commodities in retail chains. Understanding the problems faced by the consumers in the modern retail outlets are the purchase of fruits and vegetables will provide a feed back to the retailers. This input provides an opportunity to enhance the performance of retail outlets by way of fixing the problems encountered. The objective of the stud is to find out the problems perceived by the consumers in the purchase of fruits and vegetables from both the modern and traditional mom and pop store. Total sample respondents selected from the retail stores for the study were 400. Primary data were collected with the aid of pre-tested interview schedule from consumer selected randomly by adopting "mall intercept survey method" (Phau and Teah, 2009) in the selected sample retail store outlets in Coimbatore. "Garrett's ranking technique"(Garrett, 1969) was adopted to analyze the problems faced by the consumers visiting different types of stores. The study has found that selling low quantity, poor refilling and slow checkouts are the major problems faced by the consumers in the modern fruits and vegetable retail store outlets. Whereas, narrow range of merchandise, limited quantity and high cost was identified as the major problem in the case of mom and pop stores. The importance of the study understands the problems faced by the consumers in the modern retail outlets are the purchase of fruits and vegetables will provide a feed back to the retailers. This input provides an opportunity to enhance the performance of retail outlets by way of fixing the problems encountered.