Giving Shoppers Less Means Big Bucks for Indian Retailer
- Supermarket chains, including foreign ones, lose money
- D-Mart woos Indians with promise of all-year discounts
Shoppers browse goods inside a D-Mart supermarket in Thane, India.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergIndia seems to be the place retailers go to lose money. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. came in with dreams of a supermarket empire, but has had to settle for a scaled-down operation that’s been burning cash in each of the last seven years. Carrefour SA came in 2010, opened five stores, then left in 2014. Germany’s Metro AG’s losses have also persisted, 13 years after it opened its first store.
India’s D-Mart supermarkets, which have managed to turn a profit in each of the last 15 years, are an example of how to do it right. The chain makes money from giving customers fewer choices of no-frills products, enabling it to negotiate better prices with vendors, and by refusing to spend money on analytics, loyalty programs, social media or any other new-fangled strategies. It just sells cheap stuff.