Still window shopping

In a city full of bookshops, the theatre, cinema halls and even amusement parks, its citizens prefer a new entertainment option: mall-crawling. Delhi has seen a rash of shopping malls come up in and around the city and the consuming classes are out in force, checking them out.

But what do they buy at the malls? How do they pay for their purchases? And does the discount-driven Delhi-ite prefer to shop only during promotions and special schemes? Going by the answers of the respondents of a Business Standard-MDRA survey on mall customers in the national capital region, consumers shop for clothes, pay in cash and prefer to shop during sales.

The survey, exclusive to Business Standard, was organised by the Delhi-based Marketing & Development Research Associates (MDRA). Over 102 interviews were conducted in Delhi and Mumbai with mall-goers of homogenous age and income categories.

Respondents were quizzed on products, outlets, mode of payment, attraction and expectations. To avoid any skewing of data the interviews were conducted near departmental stores in Delhi and Gurgoan.

The survey had seven objectives: to obtain information on average spending across different segments of mall-goers and different product categories; to find out about seasonal/ specific time-based buying at retail outlets; to discover what factors determine the choice of department store; to measure the awareness and sales of in-house brands; to measure the effectiveness of discount schemes; and to measure the profitability of alliances between department stores.

So, what were the findings? On the issue of whether department stores can keep customers engaged for a sufficiently-long duration, the findings weren't too encouraging.

The maximum number of respondents (80 per cent) visited malls and department only once or twice a month; just 8 per cent said they visited malls more than three times a month.

Only 13 per cent stay in the store for more than one hour; the majority (38 per cent) spent 30 to 45 minutes on a mall visit.

Importantly, 71 per cent have not visited an alliance store inside a departmental store; of those who have, almost half spend less than 15 minutes in an alliance store. Most (64 per cent) of the respondents visited malls along with friends.

Only 20 per cent visit with their spouse and children and 9 per cent with their parents, a giveaway to the fact that department stores still need to tap into the family crowd, where it is easier to build upon brand loyalty.

What do the visitors buy? A whopping 94 per cent of the people polled visit malls with the primary objective of buying clothes.

Cosmetics, leather and other products form a minuscule percentage of the products being bought at these malls. Only 1 per cent bought books from department stores.

"This shows," explains K Rangarajan, director, MDRA, "that people still confuse department stores with specialty apparel stores."

Moreover, garments and seasonal products were the prime attention-catcher for 72 per cent of the respondents.

The survey indicates that department stores are popular not only with high income groups (credit card holders).

In fact, the majority of the respondents preferred to pay for their purchases in cash; only 17 per cent used just credit cards. A quarter of the interviewees used both credit card and cash for payment.

The survey also confirmed that discount and promotional schemes are a major crowd puller and a surprisingly high 38 per cent of those polled visit department stores only during such promotional campaigns.

It was also found that every alternate customer shops during such discount schemes, indicating that such strategies are very effective in pulling customers. The preferred promotion? Marked-down prices, followed by scratch card schemes.

While discount schemes do play a major role, the location "" and not product prices "" is the more important factor in determining at which retail outlet to shop. About 20 per cent of the respondents did not feel that price is an important factor in choosing an outlet.

Product quality and range are the other key factors in determining the choice of retail outlet. More than half of those polled (55 per cent) considered the range of products available as an important factor in choosing where to shop.

Another important finding on product range related to the in-house brands of department stores. While 18 per cent of those polled could recall the STOP brand of Shoppers' Stop, Ebony's ETC had a brand recall of just 13 per cent.

Nearly 60 per cent of the respondents have bought in-house brands from departmental stores; the variety of products available was the reason cited by 64 per cent for choosing the in-house brand over a national brand. Again, the majority of the in-house products bought by interviewees were clothes.

Department stores keen on shedding the garment store label would do well to pay attention to this segment.

An important result of the survey is that 45 per cent of the respondents felt a need to add confectionery in the list of goods sold by retail outlets.

Also, a high 43 per cent would like to see consumer electronic items in the outlets. Diversification and new products may help bring in more customers, who stay "" and shop "" longer.

Clearly, malls and department stores will need to work hard to transform from being merely a choice of entertainment to a serious shopping option.