GUWAHTI: There has been a recent spurt of shopping malls coming up in Guwahati. Well, that’s part of retail business and malls will continue to be developed in different parts of the city in future. In a new development, Guwahati saw one retail chain giant recently set up a shopping mall boasting of 500 brands with much publicity and it had a very high turnout at its opening.
The big question here is, are the shopping malls doing good business? With people thronging them in large numbers, footfall seems to be at an all time high in some of the malls. But the return on investment is something we will only know in years to come.
The basic question that G Plus wanted to ask was whether these malls were prospering at the expense of the small markets and bazaars. Trying to understand this development, G Plus did a poll where it asked whether the old Fancy Bazaar was still giving a tough fight to the shopping malls in Guwahati.
Well, the results are not very good for the glittering malls as people have not lost their faith in the old, traditional, homely markets.
We had around 1,000 respondents in a mix of social media platforms. The respondents believed that Fancy Bazaar was indeed fighting back and they still rely on their local markets for their day-to-day shopping.
Around 79% of the respondents still relied on Fancy Bazaar outlets for their needs. Only 21% respondents believed that Fancy Bazaar was losing the battle with the malls.
Respondents were open about how they wanted their shopping to be. The first factor was the element of bargaining. Shopping malls no doubt have “Sale” seasons to beat the markets and other competing malls but Fancy Bazaar has this unique culture that allows customers to bargain. One can bargain to shameless levels as some admit which is not at all possible in malls where the price is neatly tagged.
Many of the respondents admitted that it was tiring to shop in Fancy Bazaar but they go there because of nostalgia and its humble classic nature. To them shopping in Fancy Bazaar was like visiting a place you could relate to.
Respondents were also of the opinion that the variety of products in Fancy Bazaar cannot be matched by malls. There are a lot of wholesalers in Fancy Bazaar where the price of products would be most competitive in the entire northeast. This is a big selling point for Fancy Bazaar. Everybody wants to save a little cash.
Some respondents felt that Fancy Bazaar was cacophonic and there was chaos, parking issues and basic public amenities were missing or were in bad shape. Moreover some of the malls had the advantage of movie screens combined with food courts which is an advantage as one does not have to move around too much.
Overall, the G Plus poll acts as an indicator that local markets are going to prosper and progress in coming days and shopping malls will have to really innovate to pull themselves through.
