SnapPulse – Retailer Survey
November 2020
We recently undertook a survey with several kirana store owners across 10 Indian cities to understand more their sentiments during the festival season (Dasara and Diwali) and the performance of various categories that is being sold that their stores. The cities that were covered include Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Surat and Jaipur. Here are our key observations:
Observation 1: The kirana store owners feel that the sales will be lesser during this year’s Diwali as compared to last year.
Observation 2: The kirana store owners feel that the sales of staples and categories like biscuits and coffee are higher than last year as more consumers are spending more time at home during the festive season. They have seen that the sales of more expensive cooking ingredients like butter, ghee, vanaspati, dry fruits have dropped which could indicate lesser quantity of sweets being prepared.
Observation 3: The kirana store owners feel that the interest in Personal care (grooming) and other items related to entertaining (like juices, ice creams, CSDs, sweets and mithai) have fallen while the sales of household cleaning products have gone up as the hygiene is still a topmost priority among the consumers during these times
Observation 4: More kirana store owners are expecting the companies/distributors to support them in terms of margins/discounts/offers on products and buy-back of products not sold. They are expecting new brands / products launches and merchandising materials from them.
Observation 5: As compared to last festive season, retailer celebration is subdued this year in terms of store decorations, gifts to employees and customers.
We have been closely monitoring basket-level data on SKU’s/ brands/ categories from kirana stores and sharing these insights with brands. If there are any categories or brands you would like us to deep-dive into, please write to us at vinay.s@snapbizz.com and we will be happy to share them with you.