A Study on Store Atmosphere in Grocery Retail Market at Tiruchirappalli

Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development Journal. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0) ABSTRACT Store atmosphere plays an important role in the retail market and also it is new concept to present the product with light, color, music, interior, exterior, fixtures and display. Store atmosphere is the way of presenting store by displaying the products to the customer. A proper store atmosphere help the store to increase the customer walk-ins and in-turn increase the sales of the product. The increase in competition has necessitated retailers to differentiate themselves from their competition.


Introduction
The Indian retail sector, which is one of fast growing sectors contributing about 15 per cent to the GDP, is surely on the roll for the last few years. However, due to being largely fragmented and unorganized and reluctance by small and medium retailers to embrace the latest technology to be competitive, the sector finds it hard to keep the momentum sustainable.
There are around 13 million retail outlets across the country accounting for 95% of the total outlets that are still to be automated or organized giving a huge opportunity for Point of Sale (POS) solution providers and manufacturers to reach out to retailers. These outlets are largely dominated by small retailers such as local Kirana shops, owner-manned general stores, chemists, footwear shops, apparel shops, and other small and medium retail showrooms.
The retail market, which contains both organized and unorganized segments, stood at Rs. 23 lakh crore in 2011-12. The Indian retail sector has experienced high growth over the last decade with a noticeable shift towards organized retailing formats. The industry is moving towards a modern concept of retailing. IT adoption in the unorganized sector is far less compared to its organized counterparts. That simply means there lies a huge untapped market for modern all-inone point-of-sale solutions, cloud and mobile-based applications, which are fast catching up. According to a recent report by consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), there are over 12 million mom-and-pop stores in India's unorganized sector. While mall-based shopping formats are gaining popularity in most cities, the invincible kirana stores have their own advantages as they offer credit, and apply flexible conditions for product returns and exchanges. Apart from these factors, neighborhood locations, personal services etc are among the strengths of the neighbourhood retail stores which are largely unorganized and lack access to modern technology to run the business. Traditionally, the sector has not adopted IT due to lack of awareness and reluctance shown by the retail store owners to automate their operations.
However, rising competition and customer preferences are prompting the unorganized stores to change and go techy to tap the new opportunities and remain competitive. With the government amending rules to make way for foreign direct investment in the multi-brand retail, local retail shop owners should now go for a paradigm shift towards technology and process implementation. To compete in urban markets and middle-class neighborhood, kirana store owners must have at least basic traditional device such as cash register which can do basic functions like billing and sales summery. However, these devices lack flexibility and capability to produce comprehensive MIS reports and integrate key peripherals to provide complete automation.
By automating their business, these small retailers not only accelerate their transection process, but also improve customer satisfaction level, do more business, achieve flawless inventory management and better usage of store space and staff.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
1. To study the factors influencing the customer buying behaviour. 2. To study about the interior and exterior of the store. 3. To study about the store layout which are all used in the grocery store. 4. To study the important factor of visual merchandising to attract, engage and motivate the customer toward making a purchase. 5. To study the overall store image in consumer mind.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of the study is to determine which factor influence the customer to go for the particular shop. To find out which feature of the store attract the user to purchase the product whether it is store interior or exterior and also study which will increase the store image from the consumer side .

AREA OF THE STUDY
Tiruchirappalli (formerly Trichinopoly in English), also called Tricky, is a major tier II city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Tiruchirappalli District. Tricky is the fourth largest city as well as the fourth largest urban agglomeration in the state. Located 322 kilometres (200 mi) south of Chennai and 374 kilometres (232 mi) north of Kanyakumari, Tiruchirappalli sits almost at the geographic centre of the state. Occupying 167.23 square kilometres (64.57 sq mi), the city was home to 916,857 people in 2011.

RESEARCH DESIGN
A research design is to represent what how to approach our research and condition for collection and analysis of the data to combine relevance to research purpose. The research design is the conceptual structure with in which research is conducted; it constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data. The task of defining the research problem is the preparation of the design of the research project, popularly known as the research design.

DESCRIPTIVE STUDY
The research design is descriptive for this study because descriptive design includes surveys and fact-finding enquires of different kinds. The main characteristic of this research is the researcher has no control over the variables. The researcher only report what has happened or what is happening.

SAMPLE DESIGN
The sample for the study is collected within the Trichy region only. The sample design is convenience sampling. The store chosen for this study is Grocery. The sample is collected from all types of shoppers unbiased from age, gender, educational qualification, occupation.

METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION
The data is collected from Primary data. The primary data is collected from the shoppers through personal interview.

STATISTICAL TOOLS USED
The statistical tool were applied upon the data collected. The suitable tools are applied to analyse and draw a meaningful conclusion. The hypothesis are framed and tested with the help of the suitable tool such as simple percentage, chisquare analysis.

Interpretation
The above table shows that 74% of the respondents are male and 26% of the respondents are female.

Inference
The majority of the respondents are male only.

Interpretation
The above table shows that 10% of the respondents are from the age group of 20 and below, 72% of the respondents are from the age group of 21 -30, 14 % of the respondents are from the age group of 31 -40 and 4% of the respondents are from the age group of 41 -50.

Inference
The majority of the respondents are from the age group of 21 -30.

Interpretation
The above table shows that 70% of the respondents are unmarried and 30% of the respondents are married.

Inference
The majority of the respondents are unmarried only.

Interpretation
The above table shows that 17% of the respondents are working in government, 35% of the respondents are working in private, 4 % of the respondents are doing business, 2% of them are professional and 42% of the respondents are doing others.

Inference
The majority of the respondents are doing others as the occupation.

Interpretation
The above table shows that 56% of the respondents income is 15,000 and below, 27% of the respondents icome is 15 001 -30,000, 10% of the respondents income is 30,001 -45,000, 4% of the rspondents income is 45,001-60,000 , 2% of the respondents income is above 60,000.

Inference
The majority of the respondents income is in the range of 15,000 and below.

HYPOTHESIS SETTING Hypothesis 1 H0 =
There is no significant association between gender and average amount spend Hypothesis 2 H0 = There is no significant association between marital status and reason for shop Hypothesis 3 H0 = There is no significant association between monthly income and average amount spend Hypothesis 4 H0 = There is no significant association between monthly income and stick on list Hypothesis 5 H0 = There is no significant association between educational qualification and average amount spend Chi square analysis Hypothesis 1 H0 = There is no significant association between gender and average amount spend H1 = There is significant association between gender and average amount spend. Calculated value (4.544)is greater than the Asymptotic significance value (0.000)H0 is rejected. H1 is accepted. There is significant association between marital status and reason for shop.

Hypothesis 3 H0 =
There is no significant association between monthly income and average amount spend H1 = There is significant association between monthly income and average amount spend Calculated value (55.12)is greater than the Asymptotic significance value (0.000) H0 is rejected. H1 is accepted. There is significant association between monthly income and average amount spend.

HYPOTHESIS 4 H0 =
There is no significant association between monthly income and stick on list H1 = There is significant association between monthly income and stick on list

SUGGESTIONS
The consumer should be very careful while making purchase decisions they should not be carried away with promotional strategies employed by the retailers and make a proper analysis and make a purchase.
The organized retail sector is concerned they should make a careful study before making investments because the need of the hour and biggest challenge is the retail space and the cost of rentals.
Good ambience provide bhy the reatilers helps customer linger around the store for more time. The physical environment has a major influence on the customer buying behaviour. Therefore, retailers must take utmost care to create a dynamic shopping experience in their stores.
Promotional activities by the retail store attract customers to large extent. Promotional activities are undertaken during special occasions, off seasons, festivals or particular days.
Good variety in retail store act as a major motivator for customers to visit a store again and again

CONCLUSION
It is concluded that the retail store outlet should be based on the interior, exterior, store layout and visual merchandising. These factors are very important for maintaining and running an outlet successfully. If any one of the factor is missing or out of trend the retail store image will goes down so the merchandiser should be in trend and also know about future facts and trends related to the retail store. The retail store is running successfully many consumer were walk-in, spend money and time to purchase the product and get satisfaction.