Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
On
DEVELOPMENT OF SKILL INVENTORY
FOR SALES STAFF IN MULTI BRAND
RETAIL GARMENT STORE
Submitted to
MASTER OF BUSINESS
ADMINISTRATION (MBA)
In specialization
MARKETING
Sarang Palewar
Project guide
Dr G. Kudale
DECLARATION
Jagdish S GUPTA
CERTIFICATE
Guides Name
Head of Department
Prof RupeshPais
3
Dr V.S.
Deshpande
Principal
TABLE OF CONTENT
SR.NO
PARTICULAR
PAGE- NO
Introduction
04
07
Research objective
11
Research methodology
13
19
Conclusion
Suggestions
Referances
Annexure
Executive
Summary
Executive Summary
With liberalization and opening up of many retail outlets, retail sector is facing
stiff competition from the outerworld.Though it is said that competition always
brings the best result in any kind of economy, the other side ofthe story is that
a higher degree of competition also compels some firms to shut down their
business. Hencesurvival and existence becomes a question mark if
competition is intensified. In order to stay in the business andearn profit the
firms have to find out ways to differentiate themselves from others. One of the
many ways tostand out in this hyper competitive business world is by
providing quality service.Today, meeting customers expectation is a major
challenge faced by retail stores in India. Thereforeenhancement of service
quality delivery is of prime concern for this industry. Quality of service has
become akey strategic differentiator and means to achieve business success
within retail sector. Thus thepresent study focuses on customer perception,
sales executives perception and managersexpectation of service quality in
retail stores.The study conducted among retail stores, malls and market
based at Nagpur. The aim of the study is to analyze retail customers
expectations, sales executives perception and managersexpectation and
perceptions regarding service quality and the role of behavior inmeasuring
service quality. For the purpose of evaluating service quality statistical
methods like weighted mean average is used.The findings of this study shows
that there is a expectation gaps between manager, customer and sales
executive and service quality components like physical appearance, reliability,
assurance and negative relationship withempathy and responsiveness. It was
also found that customers expectation was high for timely response
(highmean score for responsiveness with regard to customers expectation)
and their perception was high forassurance (high mean score for assurance
with respect to customers perception). On the basis of this study,the
managers of retail stores are advised to train their personnel to be more
responsive towards customersexpectation and provide them timely service.
Suggestions are also made for proper communication with thecustomers to
be aware about their expectations from the retail stores.
A questionnaire was given to the sales executive to know what the skills which
they possess are, and what are the things which he should know about the
product and customer. Mapping customer expectation is of much importance
in a retail store. The customers expectations are always high and the
company needs to understand the customer behavior in advance. So this
study identified various expectations which the customers, managers and
sales executives expect from each other.
I have considered Multibrand retail stores in Nagpur region for my research
project. I have visited the following retail stores and gathered the information
about the skills needed for the sales staff.
Pantaloon
Lifestyle
Globus
Big bazaar
Introduction
Introduction
In this hyper competitive business world, retaining the loyal customer is a key
to survival and growth of anybusiness. In order to sustain and excel in the
competitive environment, retail industry has to maintain quality asper the
expectations of customers. Retail managers and sales personnel have to
understand the quality and the value of services beingoffered to their
customers as expected by them. The positive consequences of companies
achieving high levelsof customer satisfaction and service quality are well
documented. Indeed, service quality and customer satisfaction issues are
important as companies attemptto differentiate their services and compete
effectively in the marketplace. Most research in the area of service quality has
been based upon themodel developed by many authors, which provides a
comparison of customerexpectations and perceptions of service performance.
Customer satisfaction to a large extent influences the hotel customers
purchase decision. Customer satisfaction leads to loyalty and a flourishing
business. The previous studies states that satisfying the customer leads to
repeat
customer,
personal
recommendations
and
a
favorable
image.Consumer satisfaction and loyalty, secured through high quality
products and services, are essential for longtermsurvival and success.
This study is based upon the expectations of the customers from the sales
personnel, and the managers expectations from the sales personnel. The
study is based on the skills inventory. The skills which are required by the
sales personnel are studied in this study. Sales staff required good
communication skills because they are the first desk people who make
interaction with the customers. The image of the store depends upon the
competency of the sales staff.
10
This report is intended to assist public and private sector retail store
managers in making decisions about developing or upgrading employee skills
inventories and to reduce the cost of such initiatives by sharing information on
organizations that already have experience in this area. Given today's volatile
business climate, employers that have skills information on employees and
jobs have an advantage in choosing, developing and utilizing human
resources effectively and efficiently. This report provides information on
service-wide and departmental skills inventories currently in use in the retail
sector. It also provides the results of a survey of a sample of Nagpur private
sector companies with experience in developing and using skills inventories.
Analyzing the collective bank of employees' skills can help identify strategic
and corporate training requirements. Moreover, knowledge, at the corporate
level, of serious skills gaps or surpluses enables the organization to plan for
recruitment or downsizing.
I have visited different multi brand retail garment stores and the detail
information about the stores is given below.
Pantaloon
As Indias leading retailer, Future Retail (formerly known as Pantaloon Retail)
inspires trust through innovative offerings, quality products and affordable
prices that help customers achieve a better quality of life every day. they
serve customers in 95 cities across the country through around 16 million
square feet of retail space.
The brands for Mens includes John Miller, Lombard, Urbana, Scullers, Indigo
Nation RIG, UMM, BARE Denim, BARE Leisure, and JM Sport. For Women it
has Annabelle, Honey, Akkriti, RIG, UMM, BARE Denim Rangmanch, Trisha
and Ajile and Chalk, BARE, RIG & Lee Cooper Junior for Kids.
Apart from apparels, customers can shop for watches from brands like Tommy
Hilfiger, Citizen, Titan, Fastrack, Timex, Esprit, Kennethe cole and more. The
customers can also buy trendy sunglasses from popular brands like Allen
Solly, Polaroid, I Dee, Scott, Guess, Police and many more. Ladies handbags
brands like Lino Perros, Richborn & Baggit and Colour cosmetics and
perfumes will respectively be the added attractions to the accessory and
beauty segments of the store.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle International (P) Ltd, part of the prestigious Dubai based Landmark
Group, started its operations in India with the launch of the first Lifestyle store
in Chennai in 1999. In little over a decades time, Lifestyle has established
itself amongst the leading retail companies in India.
Positioned as a youthful, stylish and a vibrant brand, Lifestyle Departmental
stores offer its customers not just the ease of shopping but also an enjoyable
shopping experience. Each Lifestyle store brings together five concepts under
one roof Apparel, Footwear, Childrens Wear & Toys, Furniture & Home
Furnishings, Beauty & Fashion Accessories - offering a convenience of a onestop shop and a wide choice of national & international brands.
Nagpur, October 08, 2010: Lifestyle International (P) Ltd., part of 3.2 billion
Dubai based retail giant Landmark Group, has launched its 1st Lifestyle store
in the city today, taking the total number of Lifestyle store to 23 in the country.
Located at Empress Mall, Sir Bezonji Mehta Road, Nagpur; the new store is
12
Globus
Globus is a retail clothing store chain, based in Mumbai, India. Its part of
the Rajan Raheja Group. As of April 2012, the chain has 35 locations in 22
cities in India.
Globus was founded in January 1998. Its first location (at 35,000 square foot
store) opened in Indore in June 1999, followed by two locations in Chennai.
Its Mumbai flagship location opened in November 2001. By May 2008 the
chain had expanded to 24 stores, and started a push to greatly expand the
number of locations. The chain has previously announced bold plans to
expand to a much larger number of stores, such as 150.
The chain was run by Ved Prakash Arya from its founding until March 2004.
Kareena Kapoor became the brand ambassador in 2008, and planned to
launch her own clothing line with the store.
Globus is on a mission to revolutionize fashion and became an iconic youth
fashion brand in India. we aim at creating a deep connection with the Indian
youth with inspiring product designs, signature store experiences and
compelling marketing.
13
Globus will undoubtedly bring unique fashion products; spawn haute trends
and provide powerful inspiration to young customers to experiment further and
make individual style statements. Energized by this mission, a dynamic team
of passionate employees and business partners is constantly evolving and
innovating with a view to delight the consumer.
14
Technology;
afraid of customers loss. The new stores identified these problems and came
up with new customer retention strategies. The conventional store sales
executive still dont know many of the changes which have taken place in the
market.
The advertisements with the use of different and dynamic media are making
the customers expectations high and the sales staff is still finding it difficult to
match the customers expectations with their product and services.
Employers are searching for very specialized, highly educated individuals and
will pay well for such expertise. Smart organizations seek to maximize their
use of these expensive resources.
Organizations in the developing stage are generally small and managed by
one person or a very small management team. Everyone knows everyone
else and what their skills are. The organization loses this knowledge when it
grows past a certain size, or the rate of recruitment accelerates. Many large
organizations today are streamlining to reduce the number of layers of
management. When one layer of management is eliminated, personal
knowledge of staff is reduced.
Moreover, comprehensive information about the people in an organization can
either speed up staffing, or eliminate it entirely in cases where lateral moves
of individuals who are already skilled can be considered as an alternative.
Different positions of the employees will be based on the employee's
strengths or weaknesses in certain skills. As well, the broader groupings
under the Universal Job Evaluation Plan (UJEP) will likely create a need for
more precise information about skills.
openings for which they are suited and from which they may gain skills
required for promotions. Moreover, management can be informed of
individuals whose skill levels exceed requirements and who may be ready
for higher level duties.
17
Research Objectives
18
Objective:
There are various expectations of the customers when they visit a retail store.
The executives are the front desk people in a retail store, who make
interaction with the customer. Nowadays customers are also educated
regarding the quality of product, price of the product and specifications.
Nowadays whenever customer want to buy something, first they visit the
websites know about the prices of the product and then visit to a local retail
stores for purchase and force the seller to sale the product on the price which
was mentioned on the website. Companies are facing problem because of
this, so they need to make some difference between themselves and website.
They can show empathy, ambience to the customers by treating them in a
manner which the website cannot do. These difference making thing requires
some extraordinary skills to satisfy the customers. The treatment of the
employees may lead to customer delight. So the objectives of the study are:
-To identify the keys dimensions of skills those are important to for sales staff.
- To study employees attitude towards the customers.
- To study the expectations of the retail store managers from their sales
employees.
- To provide suggestions and recommendations.
Research Methodology
20
Sources of Data
21
Secondary data is the data that have been already collected by and readily
available from other sources. Such data are cheaper and more quickly
obtainable than the primary data and also may be available when primary
data cannot be obtained at all.
Here secondary are used
Books
Journal
Magazines
Website
Research Design
It would state the conceptual structure within which the research would be
conducted. The research design would facilitate and yield maximum
information.
22
Research Approach
The basic approached to research are quantitative and qualitative research.
This research is quantitative approach as it deals with feelings, perceptions
and behavior of the respondents. This focus on statics as it is a quantitative
research.
Research Instrument
Research instrument is the tool used to collect data for sample. Researcher
has choice of mainly one research instrument which can help to find out the
primary data.
The research instrument used in the research study is structured nondisguised questionnaire.
Questionnaires:
The questionnaire is an important tool for gathering primary data. Poorly
constructed questions can result in large errors and invalidate the research
data, so significant effort should be put into the questionnaire design. The
questionnaire should be tested thoroughly prior to conducting the survey.
Sampling Plan
Universe of the study:
For the given research the universe of the study is- Nagpur region.
All items under consideration in any field of inquiry constitute a total
population known as census inquiry. It can be assumed that in such an
enquiry when all items are covered, no elements of chance is left and highest
accuracy is obtained. But in practice, this may not be true, since the elements
of bias are increased and the number of observations is increased. Besides,
this type of inquiry involves a great deal of time, money or energy.
Who is to be surveyed? The researcher must define the target population that
will be sampled. In this study the researcher has characterized the sampling
unit as the sales executives, managers of a retail store, and the customers
visiting the retail stores. Interviews of sales managers were also taken to
identify the problems faced by them in dealing with customers.
23
Samples Size
How many people should be surveyed? Large samples give more reliable
results than small samples. However, it is not possible to sample the entire
target population in a very short time span. The sample size for this study
was 50 sales executives, 50 managers, and 50 customers.
Sampling Techniques
How should the respondents be selected? Researcher should know whom
he/she is going to survey, or the reason that the respondents must adequately
represent.
Non-probability Sampling:
Non-probability Sampling is a sampling technique where the samples are
gathered in a process that does not give all the individuals in the population
equal chances of being selected.
Convenience Sampling
Convenience Sampling is probably the most common of all sampling
techniques, with convenience sampling, the samples are selected because
they are accessible to the researcher. Subjects are chosen simply because
they are easy to recruit, this technique is considered easiest, cheapest and
least time consuming.
LIMIATION OF PROJECT
The project has time bound constraints.
The data for this study was collected from a different organization,
so the perception of the sales staff and managers may vary.
The perception bias or attitude of the respondents may also act as
hurdles to the study.
Some people might feel not to share their view and did not give
adequate information.
24
25
MANAGERS VIEW
1. According to you what are the most important skill required for a
sales executive?
26
According to u what are the most important skills required for a sales executive ?
To Greet customers
good listening
11%
convincing power
17%
good communication
12%
14%
10%
body language
excellent presentation
10%
Multi tasking
15%
11%
As per the analysis of above graph, it can be found that from the managers
point of view the most important skill that should be present in the sales staff
is to greet customers and should have convincing power. Also it can be seen
from the above graph that all other skills are also more or less equally
important.
27
11%
6%
10%
19%
excellent ppt
Multi tasking
22%
As per the analysis of above graph, it can be found that from the managers
point of view mostly sales executives are lagging in convincing power and
excellent presentation.
CUSTOMERS VIEW
28
Pleasant Smile
personal attention
20%
Courteous Behavior
16%
7%
24%
to greet customers
Vernacular Language
19%
13%
As per the analysis of above graph, it can be found that from the customers
point of view customers want personnel attention from sales executive and
communication should be in vernacular language.
What do you expect from the sales executive to know about the product ?
28%
Product Knowledge
Product Feature
25%
27%
Product Specification
Brand Knowledge
19%
As per the analysis of above graph, it can be found that from the customers
expect to have full knowledge about the product features and brand
knowledge.
Product demonstration
Vernacular Language
15%
Product Trial
10%
12%
Home Delivery
assistance
22%
17%
18%
6%
As per the analysis of above graph, it can be found that from the customers
point of view customers expect from sales executive it should solve the
queries and it should demonstrate the product and support well.
EXECUTIVE VIEW
31
1. According to you what are the most important skill required for a
sales executive?
According to u what are the most important skills required for a sales executive ?
To Greet customers
good listening
11%
convincing
power
7%
4%
good communication
19%
30%
body language
excellent ppt
Multi tasking
13%
6%
10%
As per the analysis of above graph, it can be found that from the executive
point of view the most important skill that should be present in the sales
executive is convincing power and good communication.
32
To Greet customers
16%
13%
17%
11%
excellent ppt
Multi tasking
14%
11%
As per the analysis of above graph, it can be found that from the executive
feels that they are the good listeners as well as they greet customer well,
good presentation and body language.
Conclusion
33
Level
Skills required
Skill Gaps
From
Managers
View
From
Customer
s View
Inadequate
productspecific
knowledge,especially at the
entrylevel.Inadequate
Communication
skillsand
interpersonal skillsis the major
concern asit is relatively easier
tobridge gaps infunctional
skills.
From
Executive
view
Inadequateunderstanding of
salespromotion, marketing
and other schemes.
34
SUGGESTIONS
The training module must include the necessary skills which are to be
present in the sales staff.
35
REFERENCES
36
References
Books
37
Annexure
Questionnaire
38
MANAGERS VIEW
1. According to you what are the most important skill required for a
sales executive?
Parameters
To greet Customer properly
Good listening
Convincing Power
Good Communication
Body Language
Excellent Presentation Skill
Multitasking
Body Language
Excellent Presentation Skill
Multitasking
Attentive and Courteous
CUSTOMERS VIEW
1. What kind of behavior do you expect from sales executive?
Parameters
Product Knowledge
Pleasant Smile
Personal Attention
Courteous Behavior
Understanding the Needs
To greet Customer
Vernacular Language
40
Vernacular Language
Product Trial
Home Delivery
Service
Solving the customers query
EXECUTIVE VIEW
1. According to you what are the most important skill required for a
sales executive?
Parameters
To greet Customer properly
Good listening
Convincing Power
Good Communication
Body Language
Excellent Presentation Skill
Multitasking
Parameters
To greet Customer properly
Good listening
Convincing Power
Good Communication
Body Language
Excellent Presentation Skill
Multitasking
41