Innovation for Changing Needs of Customers and Their Consumption Patterns in Retail for Competitive Advantage

Abstract

The consumer is changing. The millennial consumer is a paradigm of growing economic pressure and increasing competitive options. They are more capricious and less loyal. They have less time but are more conscientious. They prefer experiences over products. Today’s consumer is entirely different and unrecognizable from their peer from the good old days. There are even more clichés surrounding the millennial consumer. This brand of conventional wisdom has been proliferating in the marketplace for a few years now. The research article intends to explore and innovate into the customer demographics and behavioural patterns like psychographic behaviour, catchment area and share of wallet etc. The study was conducted across various formats of Reliance Retail through a set of structured questionnaires that included various parameters and attributes to measure the satisfaction level of customers. Respondents for this survey were the customers of those outlets who were contacted, interacted and interviewed. The target for every outlet was different. This research paper gives real-life exposure to the retail industry for innovative approaches. It focused on the diversified spectrum of the retail industry and its customer diversification. Customers included those who continued and preferred old traditional shopping techniques and those who were accustomed to online transactions because of digitalization. It included heterogeneity of customers in a homogenous servitisation process with a uniqueness assessing the consumer behaviour.