How is the Retail Sector adapting to Disruptions through Business Transformations?

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted into large scale disruptions across multiple sectors. Retail Sector is one of the sectors which has largely bore the brunt of this pandemic crisis in the short and mid-term run. Some of the retail (organised and unorganised sector) organisations have been able to adjust to the disruption by displaying and moulding into an agile business operations model. While others, due to dynamic and fast paced actions and reactions of the market, could not implement and execute immediate measures to adapt to changing consumer behaviour. This research aims to elucidate the challenges the retail sector in India is facing due to the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic from both, the consumers’ as well as the retailers’ perspective. It also reviews the on-going pandemic situation while elaborating and exploring the different strategies the retail outlets can resort to, to tackle the ongoing crisis. The research also identifies critical areas that the retail outlets can look at in order to cater to changing behaviours and increased demand of the consumers and provides certain guidelines on how retailers can act and sustain successfully in such unprecedented situations