Organized Retailing: A Brief Introduction

The concept of retailing is introduced in this chapter. Retailing is a significant contributor to GDP in many countries, making it critical to understand organized retailingorganized retail/organized retailing and its relation to customer-centricity. On this front, this chapter defines both organized and unorganized retailingunorganized retailing. It provides an in-depth understanding of the differences between the two so that the disparity between the two concepts is apparent. The organized retailingorganized retail/organized retailing industry is not the same worldwide, and this fact is adequately addressed in this chapter by discussing organized retailingorganized retail/organized retailing in emerging markets in-depth. Organized retail is not an easy phenomenon in many countries, especially in emerging markets where building an organized retailorganized retail/organized retailing platform and attracting customers to that platform is difficult. As discussed in this chapter, the challenges of establishing an organized retailingorganized retail/organized retailing channel in emerging economies are numerous. Finally, near the end of the chapter, the concept of customer-centricity in organized retailingorganized retail/organized retailing is examined. The reader will understand the fundamentals of organized retailingorganized retail/organized retailing, the distinction between organized and unorganized retailing, the challenges of organized retailing, and the concept of customer-centricity and its role in organized retailing by the end of this chapter.