Indian Budget Shopping Malls – Ignoring security & Inventory management

I have been visiting various budget shopping malls in India like Big Bazaar, Vishal Mega Mart and recently in Home accessories like Home Town etc.

These Mall’s business model is to offer cheaper products under one roof attracting Indian Middle class for shipping. Indians are very price (as well as Brand) sensitive.

The way these malls are designed and being managed raise questions if they are taking care of the Security and inventory management. Some points of concern are …

- The design of the mall is very different where you may not need to pass thru or even near the billing counter to exit the mall. You can bill your goods anywhere in the mall and the cashier package the goods in a polythene bag (many a times open) and let you move around the mall and then exit. It is very easy for the people to pickup more product and put it in bag. In department stores in foreign countries this is not so, where mostly you exit after billing.

- Camera surveillance is not installed in most of these malls. Also at some places where its installed is insufficient. Also I do not think there is enough trained manpower available who can use CCTV to identify theft and understand consumer behavior.

- Instead of deploying cameras malls have selected to employ numerous employees (probably at very low wages) . I think these employees are on third party contracts and with low or little loyalty to the mall as they do not have any assured job with them. I think these employees themselves can be a great danger to the mall, as they will know all the loopholes and will recommend their friends how to exploit such loopholes. These employees are normally form low income families and small thefts are very common in such income class.

- Tags – Bar code Price Tags of the products are not properly mounted and easily removable. One can easily remove the bar code tag of a lower cost product and put it on the higher cost product and getting the item legally billed with very low chance of identification even if its rechecked.

- Inventory management – I do not think these malls have proper inventory management and tracking/auditing. Many boxes keep lying in the parking lots , and inventory withing the mall keep changing places.

Some events I observed:

- When Big Bazaar newly opened, I bough a jacket, after going to home i observed that the security EAS tag was there on the jacket. It took me many days to remove it. It means that the Big Bazaar security tag system was not working.

- In visual mega mart I regularly saw that they need to improve security and security checks at exit every few months. This is surely due to lot of theft that might have led them to use more and more security measures..

- Recently when I went to a leading mall to purchase Curtains, a contractor employee who stitch the curtain gave a very surprising offer. he said that instead of buying 18 meters cloth as required for the curtains, just bill for 10 meters (and pay him Rs.200 bribe in cash) and he will still get the 18 meters curtain stitched and delivered. He said he has freehand to take any amount of cloth and people deployed to monitor him does not even know how to measure the cloth. It means that the company is not monitoring its inventory…

- Many of these malls come up with astonishing offer of discounts some of them are quite complex for consumers to understand. In these situations employees are given a lot of rights to make decisions.. Also there is little track of inventory that is to be used as free gifts or included with the offers…

Some articles I read mentioned that these malls are operating with just 4% margins to increase their sales volumes..

- I think these inventory losses are at least 10%
- If they are charging 4% margin after taking case of their inventory losses, then they are charging probably 15% or more actual margin
- If they are not able to account for their inventory losses in price, they they are working in loss.
- In fast growing market they might feel good with their balance sheets, but one the downtrend start their will get hit badly by these losses. some of them start accounting for it when they see their their profitability is less and sales not rising significantly..

Need to learn more lessons …

Samsung vs Sony LCD TV purchase

I did lot of research on the internet before buying the LCD TV. After research I first sortlisted

Sony & Samsung as the Brands. Then in their range I did research and found that
V series from Sony and R series from Samsung are best for quality an price and are most popular with value buyers.

Both have S series which is lower end.

I finalized 2 models

- Samsung Broduex LA40R8, Rs.84000/-
- Sony Bravia 40v300, Rs.88000/-

Sony is considered better in terms of quality but Samsung had better looks due to which i selected Samsung. If this is not important then Sony is better choice.

Tatasky Dish TV Review in Pune India

Tata sky is digital satellite dish antenna receiver service for Television in India.

I was using ICC cable tv connection in India but it was not having good quality, though they chart Rs.333/- per month in Koregoan Park, Pune, India. per month. Only 30% of the channels are clear on TV upto 29inch. On TV with 42inch LCD 90% of the channels will be not clear. Though this also depend on the wiring done, wiring quality and gauge but if you ask for change of wires then they may not do it without tkaing good amount from you.

I researched about the tatasky service and dish tv (from zee group). after doing lot of research i found that tatasky offer better technology, more clarity and better service then tatasky. You may read a lot of review saying tatasky service (call center and service team) is bad but Dish TV may be even worse.

So our of them TataSky is selected and we bought the Package from Croma store in Pune. Tatasky advertise it as 1500 but they charge Rs.1000 for installation which is not justified, that take the purchase cost to Rs.2500. ideally saying Tatasky lie on TV that tatasky cost 1500 and then charge exorbitant installation charges of Rs.1000. But reason for this may be that cable tv providers also charge Rs.1000 as installation charges though zee dish tv charge only Rs.300 or so.

The service person whom came for installation demonstrated us tha tour wire in the house for cable TV is of lower strength and may not be able to carry all channels properly. We saw it using his system an then allow him to change it. it needed 3 meters extra cable costing Rs.40 per meter. They provide 20 meters free cable.

We found quality of all the channels good, all channels were clear for 42 inch LCD TV.

At the time of purchase you need to also buy Rs.1000/- coupon which is actually payment of installation charges, the service person may like to see it. But you need to yourself activate this coupon in your account by calling tatasky call center else your account will show -Rs.1000/- balance and may be deducted from your future payment. Its easier to activate this voucher form tatasky.com website, this is voucher like prepaid voucher.

After that within 14 days of installation you need to purchase the monthly coupons and activate them. you can either pay directly on tatasky website using credit card or buy coupons from tatasky dealers and then activate them.

You will need your subscriber ID, which you can also see on your TV by pressing home button on remote. I was surprised that i can also see my payments made to tatasky and due dates on the TV. i took super saver package cositng Rs.300/- per month but their Family pack of Rs.250/- per month is more then enough for all requirements.