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The main purposes of this paper are to perform a micro‐ and macro‐dimensional analysis, and to apply the theory of eclectic firm to understand the investment dimension in the apparel retail environment in India.

A micro and micro analysis of the retail industry in India was conducted. Eclectic firm theory was then applied to the analysis to understand the apparel retail environment in India.

The key findings of the study are that foreign retailers looking to successfully capitalize on India's impressive growth need to understand several driving attributes such as strong and distinct culture, population distribution, and local conditions, and risks that are indeed unique to India.

This report makes a contribution towards a comprehensive understanding of the Indian apparel retail market. It is desirable for foreign retailers to acquire such knowledge in order to devise suitable strategies to enter and compete in the Indian marketplace. In addition, this study provides researchers to undertake more in‐depth analysis of the market to explore the different facets of the attractive yet complex Indian environment.

The case is written using secondary data sources (namely, research documents, press information, journal articles and published interviews). Publicly declared company information has further been leveraged to augment case facts. All information sources have been duly acknowledged in the reference section.

The case is written in the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on the Indian retail industry, revolving around scenarios in which a multinational retailer has to decide on its long- and short-term strategy in such an economic crisis. The case story has been developed around Marks and Spencer’s retail venture in the Indian market. With the COVID-19 pandemic impacting business at various levels, with countries moving to lock down and economies shrinking to recessionary levels, one of the worst affected sectors is retail. The teaching case builds upon Mark and Spencer’s initial decision of not entering and extending its food/grocery business in India. While it remained a dominant player in Indian fashion retail for almost two decades, it needs to re-think its decision of entering food retail owing to a pandemic situation affecting its offline sales/store footfall and increasing competition from global fashion brands such as Zara and H&M that had flooded the Indian fashion retail sector. The case provides a context for students to perform environmental factor and competitor analysis for a sector, with special focus on decision making in a changing crisis scenario.

This case could be used in undergraduate and MBA classroom programme, across subjects such as retail management, marketing management, international business, international business environment and strategic business management. This case fits while discussing topics such as business environmental factors, competitor analysis, decision-making under crisis, market entry decision, omnichannel retail strategy, consumer behaviour and brand management.

The purpose of this research is to portray the historical evolution of retailing from 1980 to 2020. The study considers India as the domain as it is one of the fastest growing markets, and the retail growth is anticipated to reach more than one trillion dollars within this decade.

This paper captures the historical growth trajectory of retailing from the pre-online era to the online era and highlights how the retail environment has become modernized and sophisticated in the process in India.

The study traces the journey of retail from 1980 to the multi-billion-dollar sector it had become by 2020 in India. Furthermore, the article provides an overview of how the different retail forms and players in the Indian retail sector have been shaping the industry over the last four decades. During this period, there has been a transformational change in the format of Indian retailing. The Indian consumers' shopping mindset moved from physical in the 1980s to online, and now “Phygital” (Physical and Digital) in 2020s has become an omni-channel platform in Indian retail.

This paper aims to present a viewpoint of the evolutions of retailing from the unorganized to the organized form and from the physical to the online form over the last 40 years in the Indian retail sector landscape.

The objective of the research is to understand Indian consumers' definition of retail service quality with respect to small retailers and influence of hedonic and utilitarian shopping values in determining their expectations towards small retail service quality.

Data were collected through a small retail store‐intercept technique in four cities of Northern India (n=386).

The results indicate that small retail service quality for Indian consumers comprises ambience, layout, and service/relationships dimensions. Hedonic and utilitarian shopping values influence consumers' service quality evaluations.

The study did not consider demographic variables like income, education, and occupation as factors that might affect consumers' perceptions towards retail service quality.

The findings can help small retailers in improving their service quality by focusing on Indian consumers' hedonic and utilitarian shopping values. The research helps small retailers to combat the competitive pressures of organized retailing in the Indian retail landscape.

There has been limited research on understanding consumers' perceptions towards retail service quality in the Indian setting. Further, there is no research to examine Indian consumers' perceptions towards small retailers' quality attributes.

The purpose of the study was to understand influence of assortment, store facility, service and relationship on Indian consumers’ small retailer patronage behaviour. The determinant of small retailer–consumer relationships was studied.

Indian consumers were contacted through retail stores intercept method and requested to participate in the survey (n = 321). The questionnaire was adapted from the research conducted by Lee et al. (2008) and modified (some items on relationship were added). ANOVA and multiple regression tests were used to analyze the data.

The Indian consumers’ prefer small retailers due to assortment, service, store facility and relationship. The older and younger populations differ in their reasons for preferring small retail stores. The results show that service and assortment influence consumer-small retailer relationships.

The small retailers’ can harness the relationship and social interaction attribute of their service package for defending their turf against organized retail. The fast-moving consumer goods companies can use the competitive strength of small retailers for increasing their distribution in the interiors of the country and understanding market demand.

There is limited research in India to understand competitive advantage of small retailers over organized retailing.

The purpose of this paper is to assess Indian consumers' brand consciousness by examining their brand knowledge, purchase behaviour and perceptions of foreign brands. It provides key inputs for global retailers to harness the potential in growing consumerism in India.

A survey of 300 Indian consumers was conducted and the data were analysed using descriptive and simple regression techniques.

The study found that brand purchase in India varies across product categories. At present, consumer knowledge and use of foreign brands is low, and Indian consumers are price‐sensitive. Indian consumers are experimenting with brands and would like more foreign brands to enter the Indian market.

Due to the small sample size, advanced econometrics techniques could not be used to analyse the dataset.

The paper is the first to assess the impact of retail liberalisation on Indian consumers' shopping behaviour, particularly their brand consciousness.

Research investigating turnover intention among frontline employees in the Indian retail industry is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to explore factors affecting withdrawal cognitions among front-end retail employees in India.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the factors responsible for developing turnover intentions among the front-end employees. Data were analyzed using the ground theory approach.

Qualitative investigation revealed nine factors (abusive supervision, favoritism, perceived job image, insufficient pay, work exhaustion, perceived unethical climate, organization culture shock, staff shortage and job dissatisfaction) are responsible for developing turnover intention among front-end employees in the Indian retail industry.

The study uncovers antecedents of turnover intention among front-end employees in the relatively neglected Indian retail sector through a qualitative technique. Theoretical contributions, managerial implications, limitations and direction for future research are discussed.

With the growing importance of service quality in Indian retail, it becomes critical for the retailers to identify the appropriate dimensions for their retail stores. In the process of evaluating service quality the decision maker is often faced with ambiguities due to the imprecise information gained from the respondents. The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated fuzzy (fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) approach to help the decision makers/retailers in practicing and judging the priorities of service quality strategies and accordingly benchmarking retail stores in Indian retail environment.

The study incorporated the five basic dimensions of Retail Service Quality Scale proposed by Dabholkar et al. (1996) and the FAHP approach to three leading apparel retail stores of a major city (Rourkela) of Orissa (an Indian state located in eastern part of the country) to determine the weights of criteria and sub-criteria of retail service quality.

The study identified that the dimensions, namely, personal interaction, physical aspects, reliability and policy are perceived as important by the Indian consumers. Merchandise and the store’s willingness to handle returns and exchanges emerge as the most influencing variable affecting the overall service quality of the store.

The study was restricted to a major city of Orissa and to three apparel stores. The results obtained may not be extrapolated to the country as a whole. The authors believe that the integrated approach of FAHP could be used by a variety of service industries to evaluate the service quality. The study did not investigate switching behavior among the respondents as they had been visiting all the three apparel stores during the preceding months.

The integrated approach of FAHP makes an empirical contribution to the service quality and retail marketing literature by overcoming the uncertainty of concepts those are associated with human beings’ subjective judgments.

The retailer can improve the quality of service provided by them based on the parameters important in Indian context, which will lead to higher customer satisfaction.

This paper can help the retail service providers to identify which of the retail service quality dimensions requires much attention to create sustainable competitive advantage.

The retail sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in India. Increase in per capita income, growing urbanization, and economic reforms are some key factors that have propelled its growth. The growing Indian market has attracted many foreign retailers and Indian corporates to invest in this sector. However, this is one of the few sectors in which there is a restriction on foreign direct investment. The sector is politically sensitive, and the Indian government is trying to formulate an appropriate policy regime.

In this context, based on a primary survey, this chapter tries to analyze what should be the right policy regime that will help to sustain the growth of retail in India. The chapter shows that due to the quasi-federal nature of governance, the retail sector is regulated by a large number of ministries/departments at the centre state and local level, which leads to multiple regulations and the requirement of multiple clearances. The laws relating to this sector are outdated and their definitions and enforcement varies across different states of India. Lack of supporting infrastructure, high real estate costs and low purchasing power of consumers are some other barriers. To sustain the growth of this sector, there is an urgent need for regulatory, fiscal, and other reforms. Precisely, the clearances process needs to be streamlined and outdated regulations should be amended. To encourage investment in the supply chain and inflow of technical know-how and skills the government should allow FDI in multibrand retail. However, since retail is a sensitive sector, India cannot take an international commitment on liberalization of retail before streamlining the domestic policy regime.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether experiential offerings from two types of retailers play a significant role in consumer responses toward Indian malls. Specifically, this study examined the relationships between consumer perceptions of experience economy 4E constructs (i.e. educational, entertainment, escapist, and esthetic experiences) and experiential value associated with merchandise retailers and service retailers in Indian shopping malls, and between perceived experiential value and mall patronage intention.

A mall intercept survey conducted in two shopping malls in India resulted in 552 useable responses. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships.

Experience economy constructs (i.e. entertainment, escapist, and esthetic experiences) contributed to the experiential value associated with merchandise retailers and/or service retailers in the mall. Experiential value associated with both merchandise retailers and service retailers in the mall positively influenced mall patronage intention.

The results have practical implications for mall retailers, mall managers, and mall developers; particular experiential strategies for both merchandise retailers and service retailers may improve patronage intentions toward the mall, which includes a measure of purchase intentions.

Although academic articles support the idea that retailers can obtain benefits by offering experiences to consumers, this is the first study to empirically validate the role of specific consumer experiences, the 4Es, resulting from both merchandise retailers and service retailers, in a non-Western mall context on value creation for shoppers and the consequent influence on patronage intentions.