Infinite thoughts

This is interesting. Read this article from TechCrunch - the shop owner is charging the patrons for looking at the items in her shop. I believe this was long overdue. Most of us (including myself!!) visit a store, check out the item, ask numerous question, look at the comparable models, negotiate and step out with shaky promise of coming back for purchase. Then go online, check out the lowest price available and order. Boom... there goes the profit of the brick and mortar store.. Not just the profit, but it also cost him/her the time, probably the salary of sales person, rent of the place, inventory cost and what not!! The amount of $5 is not important. It may not really be the cost associated with each onlooker. What is important is that the shop-owners are facing very different problem which they have not yet solved and trying to find out ways to monetize the physical shop that they have setup with huge investments. While it doesn't cost the Internet savvy customers to do ...

I happened to visit Big Bazaar today after a long time and was happily surprised not to have so much rush in the mall. I had always discouraged myself from visiting Big Bazaar for two reasons. One - the huge rush and second the congested arrangement inside the mall. I found More comparatively better than any other super market including Reliance Fresh and Spencer's . Last time when I visited Big Bazaar it had impressed me with the variety of grocery items available under one roof. This time I was amazed by the speed with which the billing was completed at the cash/credit counter. While the counters were still having a big queue and each customer having tens of items, I could not ignore that each item was getting correctly read by the bar code reader in the first attempt itself. It was a good to see this seamless operation as I have kind of got used to bad bar codes/readers in the More super market. It has been a constant observation that almost 15-20% items will be required to b...

For past few weeks we (me and my better half ) are continuously observing a steep downfall in the service provided by the retail chains such as Pyramid, TruMart, Spencer's Daily (formerly Food World) and the likes. Being in software industry and not yet reached to a level where one can slip out of office at 6 PM, we invariably end up visiting these supermarkets on the weekends. Typically, most of them are out of stock for half the things that we have on our list to purchase. Be it a common thing like atta or something not so common. If you are lucky enough to find the stock, it would be way old, close to the expiry date. More to your unfortune, you would spot some life, which we don't dare to it, inside the packed food item. We initially thought it's just us who are not that fortunate to find the required stuff. But after repeated instances at TruMart, Bhandarkar Road, we approached the customer helpdesk only to find that they don't keep the complaint book. To our surpr...