2. Presently Raipur city has four malls located at different locations throughout the
city. Out of these four malls, three already house one or the other type of retail store which
include Big Bazaar & Easy day. The details of these stores as given in table 1 and exhibit 1
shows the location of these malls in the city.
Amongst these three retail stores, presently the Big Bazaar store located at City
Centre mall sees the highest footfalls. It is located at the central location in Raipur city. This
mall also has stores like Central, Reliance trends, Reliance footprints and Cinemax Multiplex.
This is the biggest of the three stores in terms of area and also generates the
highest sales in Raipur. The store is spread on a single floor over 38000 square feet. It keeps
more than 50000 SKUs of items ranging across electronics, apparels, shoes, accessories,
watches, FMCG items, kitchen and dining, home and living, bed and bath. The store also
houses a Food Bazaar and a bakery shop. It has a workforce of around 150 employees. The
store works in two shifts, first from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm and the second from 1:30 pm to
10:30 pm. It has a total of 15 billing counters which include 3 pocket billing counters. Three
cashiers report in the morning shift and ten in the evening. Out of the total staff 25 people
are cross trained to handle different activities so as to meet any contingencies. Table 2 and
table 3 shows the number of billings done on a particular day for afternoon and evening
time which can be considered as daily averages at these times.
Amara Bazaar has option to take up the space in two of the malls in the city. One
mall is 5 year old R K Mall and the other is the new upcoming mall named Mosaic in the
Naya Raipur city. Some details related to these malls can be seen in Table 1 and location of
these malls is also shown in the Exhibit 1.
R K Mall is located towards the west end of the city and is close to the cities of Durg
and Bhilai which are two major industrial hubs around Raipur with a big chunk of middle
class population. This mall is around 20 kms from these two cities. This mall already houses
a multiplex named Glitz and many branded stores.
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3. The other mall, Mosaic, is under construction in the Naya Raipur city. The mall is
part of an urban housing and commercial development plan. Along with the construction of
the mall, some residential and commercial complexes are also under construction. Some of
these buildings will be completed along with the mall within one year but the whole project
is expected to be complete in 5 to 7 years. During this time many other projects will also be
coming up in the Naya Raipur city.
Mr. Alok Banerjee, CEO of Amara Bazaar has chosen Mr. Rakesh Ranjan, Head-
Retail Strategy, for setting up the store in Raipur. Since the city has a huge potential Mr.
Banerjee doesn’t want to leave any stones unturned in setting up the store. He also knows
that the consumer behaviour of people in different cities is different therefore partnering
with local small players to understand the psyche of the population will be important.
Mr. Ranjan will have to study the working of other stores like Big Bazaar, Easy Day
etc closely and he will then have to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of the current
Retail store management model in Raipur.
All the hypermarket stores in the city open at around 11:30 in the morning and
close by 9:00 pm. Amara Bazaar is planning to remain open till midnight. Mr. Ranjan is also
thinking about running two shifts i.e. from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and the other from 4:00pm
to 12:00 pm.
Most of the hypermarkets use the ‘multiple line multiple server’ model for billing.
These stores have 10-15 billing counters (may vary as per store size and layout- usually a
store with area of 30000 – 40000 sq feet will have such number of counters) which are
opened depending upon the number of customers lined up for billing. For instance in the
weekdays during the afternoon the store could be working with only one billing counter
open, on the other hand, during the weekends in the evening hours when people are free
and come in huge numbers to shop the store has to open all the billing counters.
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4. Amara Bazaar is looking for various other queuing options so as to minimize
customer waiting time and also optimize the use of floor space at the store. These models
could be single line multiple server, single line single server and others.
Mr. Rakesh Ranjan is assessing the situation well and with his experience in the
retail industry for the last 15 years he knows that the whole idea of setting up this store
would have to be first strategized on paper and only then the execution could begin. While
setting up the earlier retail stores in Dhanbad, Gangtok and Ranchi he had understood that
there could not be a standard model and hence, changing the operations of the store as per
the norms of city is best to have a more customer centric approach. In line with this thought
he is also planning to suggest the management a more ‘national’ name. Amara Bazaar has
been a very regional name and national expansion had always found some amount of
difficulty for the local customers to relate themselves with this store.
One morning in his office at Park Street, Kolkata, Mr. Ranjan called his operations
and marketing team and decided to plan out a strategy for the store to be opened in Raipur.
He was very clear in that the team was to work on only the strategies discussed during that
meeting. The teams were to work in tandem with each other to find out the best strategies.
Amara Bazaar was not satisfied with the level of operational efficiency it was experiencing at
its other stores. They were hoping to replicate learnings from this store to their other stores
also. The high operational efficiency in this store could be modelled elsewhere as many
stores of Amara Bazaar were experiencing low operational efficiency. Mr. Ranjan made the
team understand how this project would not only give them professional highs but also
expand their knowledge of some of the finest tools used in operations management. He
wants his team to work out the following issues:
1) Location of the store- Mr. Ranjan asked his team to refer the map of Raipur and
suggest the location out of the two options they had. They were to basically focus on
maximum footfall and also a very high percentage of the Target group
2) Decide on the format of the store- Supermarket/Hypermarket/Supercentre.
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5. 3) Based on the format of the store the marketing team was to suggest the
Merchandising Strategy. The team was to suggest whether in the city of Raipur a
store with high variety and fewer assortments would be advisable or one with high
assortment and less variety would succeed.
4) Depending upon the merchandising and type of the store format what should be the
layout of the store and placing of various items and billing counters.
5) Develop a shift plan with the manpower requirement.
6) Compare the various queuing models and suggest the best which would save
customers from waiting extra and also bring in efficient usage of manpower for
Amara Bazaar.
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6. Other stores
S. (not
Mall Name Location Retail Store Owned By Remark
No. exhaustive
list)
Globus, Lotus,
1 City Mall 36 Devendra Nagar Big Bazaar Future Group
Inox
Magneto Bharti-
2 Mahaveer Nagar Easyday Westside, PVR
Mall Walmart
Central,
City centre Reliance
3 Shankar Nagar Big Bazaar Future Group
Mall trends,
Cinemax
No Hypermarket- Space available
4 R. K. Mall Amnaka crossing Glitz Cinema,
30000 sqft to 50000 sq feet
Proposed- Fun Mall is under construction- will be
5 Mosaic Mall Naya Raipur republic, up by this year- space available
pantaloons 40000 sq feet to 60000 sq feet
TABLE 1: Details of Malls and Hypermarkets in Raipur
Total
Counter Start End
Status no.
No. time time
served
1 Closed
2 Closed
3 Open 11:45 13:20 26
4 Closed
5 Closed
6 Open 11:45 13:20 29
7 Closed
8 Closed
9 Closed
10 Closed
11 Closed
12 Closed
TABLE 2: Observations at Big Bazaar (City Centre Mall) during day time
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7. Total
Counter Start End
Status no.
No. time time
served
1 Closed
2 Open 18:55 20:17 14
3 Open 18:55 20:17 20
4 Closed
5 Open 18:55 20:17 25
6 Closed
7 Open 19:16 20:35 22
8 Closed
9 Open 19:16 20:35 17
10 Open 19:16 20:35 29
11 Open 19:16 20:35 24
12 Open 19:16 20:35 23
TABLE 3: Observations at Big Bazaar (City Centre Mall) during evening time
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8. EXHIBIT 1: Raipur city map showing location of various malls. The colours represent population
density/ sq km
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9. GUIDELINES
1. Deadline for submission of case analysis is 2359 hours on 12th Feb’13.
2. Reasonable assumptions can be taken and should be mentioned.
3. The analysis should be in the form of a power-point presentation not exceeding 15
slides excluding the ‘Cover’ slide & ‘Thank you’ slide.
4. The cover slide must contain your team name; name, email ID & contact no. of both
the participants.
5. The parameters on which teams would be judged would include the depth of their
analysis, the flow of the analysis, extent of coverage of the topics, clarity and
innovation in ideas and the way of presentation.
6. File should be named as InstituteName_TeamName
Example IIMRaipur_MenInBlue
7. Subject line of the mail should be Xploryze_ InstituteName_TeamName
8. Mail your case analyses at xploryze.equinox@gmail.com
In case of any clarifications you can write to xploryze.equinox@gmail.com or contact
Anubhav Sood at 9200007747
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT RAIPUR 9
