原创 WalMart arrives. Can Best Buy or Fry's be far behind?

The Nov. 27 announcement of the joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and WalMart to enter the retail sector in India led me to thinking about the nature of retailing in India. For several years, any article on distribution and the supply chain, printed in management journals and indeed the general business press, expended reams of ink and waxed eloquent about the unique phenomenon of single unit packaging in the retail sector and how the corner paanwallah was at the forefront of the retailing revolution in India. We seem to have come a long way since then.

WalMart represents the grandfather of the mass retailing and mass merchandising phenomenon. The idea is that you can get everything under one roof- i.e the big box merchant concept. There will be a direct impact on everything the concept touches- real estate required for the location, various sourcing areas for products and parts. Networking infrastructure and retail point of sale systems connected to large back office networks to keep the supply chain up and running. RFID tagging for all the products on the store shelves, security monitoring systems and so on and so forth. All of this already happens today. However the magnitude of the operations will go up and scaling issues will have to addressed.

It will be interesting to see how this joint partnership evolves. It will primarily be an urban phenomenon, presumably, expanding in a modified form to rural areas if the demographic patterns don't support the urban model. It will also be interesting to watch the evolution because Walmart's history in areas outside the US has been mixed due to cultural differences in the way people approach retailing in other countries. Recent experiences shopping for a fridge and a desktop system in New Delhi and Chennai were quite revealing in understanding the way electrical appliance and electronics distribution and retailing happens today. Few dealers carried more than one or two brand names and most had only a small number of models on the display floor - Quite a difference from the WalMart or Best Buy concept that has multiple models from several vendors on display at any given time- also known as the tyranny of choice.

If this is indeed the case in most metro areas, how soon will the concept of mass merchandising spread to the world of computer retailing and electronic appliances? Many years ago, the microprocessor vendor provided a one stop shopping center for a desktop. You could still assemble it yourself but it pretty much came as a kit. As the supply chain for computers and infrastructure equipment began to be outsourced, retail outlets like Fry's Electronics for the do it yourselfer started up. Fry's is a phenomenon in its own right. It has evolved from a warehouse style one stop shopping place for computer parts to a more sophisticated retail outlet, branching off into consumer electronics and appliances, books, food and other products that are a far cry from its origins.

In India, medium and large businesses went to the HCLs and other branded distributors in the local region. The rest of us went to our contact down the street who called his contact in Lamington Road, Nehru Place or Ritchie street and a customized system was put together using mostly non branded or gray parts. Is this the beginning of the end for the not so formal customized desktop service or is it a new era of retailing based on better pricing information for the not so organized sector?