What are consumers buying at Kirana Stores this week?
The numbers as on 12th April 20
In this current time of lockdown, we have been witnessing the steady and continued presence of the local kirana stores. They have been bravely keeping their stores open, selling whatever they have been supplied with at their regular prices, doing their bit to discourage panic buying and hoarding, and undertaking home deliveries till midnights. They continue their good customer service, showing huge resilience and the ability to adapt to the ever-changing and trying circumstances
We took a deep-dive into the performance of these stores during the time of lockdown and also analyzed the performance of various categories where we found some interesting stories on a few categories at the network of SnapBizz stores across the 7 cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad.
We see a steady decline in-store activity over March and April 2020, and a sharp drop once lockdown procedures started. Therefore, stores are not remaining open due to either (a) police activity (b) lack of staff or (c) lack of supplies. Either way, there is severe disruption observed.
The two spikes in the beginning and middle of March seem to indicate some amount of advance buying as a retailer would normally generate a bill only when a customer buys a larger number of items (more than about 2-3). It could also indicate more number of customers relying on kirana stores for essentials. We also see a sharp fall during the lockdown which appears to be arrested a bit over the Easter weekend.
The trend over March reflects increasing spends per bill which could be indicative of (a) panic buying (more quantities), (b) more items in a bill (c) price rises or (d) switching to more expensive items in case the regularly bought items were not available ( due to supply issues or retailer push). This seems to be settling in April but we will a close eye if to see if this continues over the next few weeks too.
There was an increase in customers buying on credit over March which is in-line with the indications of advance buying that we saw). However, that has dropped sharply post the lockdown even though the bill amounts have gone up. This indicates that the credit customers have stocked up well in advance. This could also indicate less willingness on the part of stores to extend credit during uncertain times.
We have been collecting and constantly 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.