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METRO Cash & Carry is an international self-service wholesale retailer. It operates acrossEurope and in some countries of Asia and Northern Africa. It is the largest sales division of the
German trade and retail giant METRO AG.
METRO Cash & Carry is different from B2C retail chains (such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour or Tesco)
in that its business concept is targeted towards professional customers rather than end
Consumers. The cash-and-carry concept is based around self-service and bulk buying. METRO
Cash & Carry serves to registered customers only. Core customer groups are hotels,
restaurants, caterers, traders and other business professionals. With 655 stores in 29 countries,
METRO Cash & Carry is an international leading player in self-service wholesale. The product
range and services are tailored exactly to the needs of the professional customers. Hoteliers,
restaurateurs, caterers and small-scale food retailers find everything they need to guarantee
their business success. Their trademarks include top quality, huge choice and excellent value for
money. METRO Cash & Carry has an international identity and a true international corporate
culture to support it. This has helped them greatly in their efforts for expansion in the
international market. They are the major growth drivers of the METRO Group, one of the
worlds leading retailing companies.
The Cash and Carry concept
METRO's Cash & Carry business model is based on a Business to Business (B2B) concept and
focuses on meeting all the needs and requirements of business customers. It is a modern
format of wholesale trading, catering only to business customers.
The cash and carry business model brings together small, medium and large-sized producers,
farmers, agricultural cooperatives and manufacturers, with the dispersed community of hotels,
restaurants, caterers, traders, retailers and small to medium business enterprises, under one
roof.
A cash and carry retailer buys directly from producers and manufacturers and sells to business
customers from its no-frill approach wholesale centers.
In this way, cash and carry operators shorten the supply chain and eliminate the high costs
associated with a fragmented supply chain (estimated as high as 25 per cent in India). It also
cuts costs and wastages by building modern trade infrastructure and implementing modern IT
based systems, which improve efficiency.
By aggregating the demand of small and medium businesses, cash and carry formats are able to
buy in bulk quantities for the advantage of its customers. Some of the savings made are passed
Outcome of the survey was that 90% of the people are having credit cards which they use regularly
for their normal purchases and many of them feel safe to carry credit card rather then carrying Hughcash along with enjoying good credit period. Hence the learning for us with this survey was that if we
accept other credit cards then we can get more customers and more purchases per customer since
the customer can purchase more on credit and hence we can give a tough completion to other
wholesalers in the market who provides goods on credit.
y Home brand Research. (Fine Food & Aro)
1. Research on Fine Food Articles
Research was conducted on more then 50 Fine Food articles in different areas like PICKLES, NIBBLES
international quality standards on all products that we make and hence further strengths and
weaknesses were found out of Fine food to improve on Weaknesses and maintain the strengths.
The outcome of finding strengths and weaknesses were that we have strengths in terms of pricing
and shelf life where as we are lagging behind from competitors on the basis of branding issue whichcreated lack of awareness amongst consumer for Fine Food articles
2. Research on Aro Articles.
Around 250 articles were taken for the research and same research methods were used for Aro
articles but it was only half done during our tenure and hence more information can not be provided
y Metro Sales Vs Market sales for DC 60. (Ac Nielsen Report)
A quarterly sale from Jan 2010 to March 2010 was compared with the sale of entire Market forDc 60 (Kolkata) provided by AC Nielsen. A major driving factor for doing a research was to know
the products market demand and METRO share of demand in the market.
A report was provided by AC Nielsen which was compared with the sale data available in metro
and certain products were found to have a good growth and increasing market share where as
certain products were losing the grip from the market and those were the products we had to
work on to stable the decline growth and then regain the growth.
y Coding for Budget.(Advertisement Budget)
The task involved in coding for the budget was to give the codes for various Expenses occurred
on advertising. This helped us (Metro) in reduction of time for finding the particular kind of
expenses occurred and increased the efficiency and accuracy for coding and raising the Work
orders correctly
y Cross checking of Bandhan Customer. (Reward amount conflicts)
This was a manual task of cross checking the printed Bandhan Bonus issue letters and receiver
of the same mentioned in the system where correct amount should be delivered to correct card
holder in correct Dc
y Work orders.
Work order task was a major task since there was an up gradation of metro way took place and
the new metro way had issues due to which there was loss of coordination between accounts
The prime Objective for the anniversary is to increase the brand image of Metro by providing manyoffers, Discounts, promotions Etc to its Clients and attract them to visit the store. Since Metro is
basically in to B2B activity all the products in metro are catered to SMEs and Hospitality Industries
and small and scattered individual buyers.
Being a trainee my objective was to co-ordinate and conveys the correct information to Advertising
department with ZERO Mistakes.
The anniversary were and others works were divided in to several tasks and hence each task had its
each objective which is described below
y Update and cross checking of MM 1014 and 1015 ( Anniversary metro mail)
The prime activity of our internship with metro was to co-ordinate with all the department of
Buying so as to avoid any miss communication between Branding and buying department. Also
we kept a track of all the offers for different Distribution centers with different promotional
activities.
The crosschecking for Metro mail was essential because what was planned and what should
have been delivered had to be in line and hence we crosschecked all the offers in PDF for Metro
mail 1015 & 1016 with all the off we got from Buyers and communicated all the correct
information to customers for both the metro mail 1014 & 1015.
y In store branding for Anniversary.
y out store branding for anniversary
Both in store and out store branding were very important since the message should have been
conveyed to the customers accurately with right advertisement at right place to get the
maximum impact of our Branding.
W
e assisted Metro for both in store and out store branding in Kanakpura and yashwantpura DCand the deadline of finishing the task was 30th
of June which was accomplished by us.
y Managing the Sugar Promotion and survey on commodity purchase.
The sugar promotion was unique and most attractive promotional offer Metro had for the
anniversary 2010. Unique because this was the first commodity based promotion and attractive
because this promotion was targeted to attract prime customers to buy commodity & increased
the commodity based buyers in Metro.
A telephonic survey was conducted for the purpose of buying behavior of a commodity based
customer. The purpose was to know how customers purchase commodity, what are thepreferences while buying commodity and from where they purchase commodity so as we can
work on the same and come out with some solution to improve the Metro sale.
y T-shirt Distribution of Anniversary
All the T-shirts according to the Size of all the employee in Head office and DCs were sorted
and distributed as per the size on the time. The prime objective of this task was to distribute T-
Shirts to all the staff members in various cities for the branding purpose so that on the day one
of the anniversary all the staff can wear the same and promote Anniversary inside the Metro.
y E-mail Id correction for sending Anniversary mails
E-mail id correction was done to increase the reach of customers & increase footfall in Metro.
The basic purpose was to increase the accuracy of E-mail delivery to the customer and increase
the awareness of anniversary and offers to the customer.
y Data Updation for anniversary
Data Updation was done to get the maximum information of customers who are visiting the
store and also to increase the future reach by getting correct detail of customers. It was acrucial activity and we not only hired Promoters but also kept a prize of Gold coins so as to
attract the customer to fill the data. It was aimed to increase the customer data base in the
system of Metro.
y Telephonic survey on Credit card acceptability in Metro
The main objective of the telephonic survey was to know if a customer wants various credit
cards to be accepted in metro and what are the terms and conditions they are willing to accept
while using the credit cards.
y Home brand Research. (Fine Food & Aro)
Brands such as ARO and Fine foods are owned by Metro and the research was done for the
purpose of finding different ways to improve the sales of this brands.
The scope for the Metro anniversary was wide in terms of Sales, Footfall and Brand image. All the
offers were given for the customers to visit the stores since Metro in to B2B business and footfalls
and promotional offers are most important way to increase sales. Various offers were provides in
various sections and on various articles
The anniversary was concentrated on all the sections of Metro to make the anniversary a Generaland target all the segments of buyers. Offers such as electronically appliances, FMCG goods,
Groceries Etc we kept to make it more general.
Anniversary of 2009 was a success on YOY basis with a good increase of sales and revenue and a
similar trend is expected this year too. Also the 2010 Anniversary has a scope in terms of commodity
sales as sugar promotion was included in the anniversary for the first time and a special sugar
promotion counter with promoters were allocated in stores to promote the same
Scope of anniversary could have increased by keeping anniversary from 28th
of June to 3rd
of august.
The basic reason behind this is the salary slab of most people comes around month end and hencespending is generally high during the beginning of the month and so the sales of our customer
increase in the beginning of the month and by keeping it on the mentioned dates above our client
can keep two months stock and increase the benefits from the anniversary where as we get a better
sale.
Also we could have done indirect Advertising by tying up with suppliers like P&G, HUL, Reckit Etc in
many Newspapers about Anniversary such as Buy HUL products and get Gio Free In Metro so as to
reach more people or customer by advertising through supplier and not through us.
1. Promoters were not trained adequate to handle sugar and data collection
2. Floor branding was not used much.
3. Video branding was not used inside the store
4. Audio branding was confusion
5. Free gifts were not attractive
6. No home brand branding was done inside DC
7. A promotion on Home brand was missing.
Suggestions
1. Proper training should have been provided and a 1 day mock should have been done to know
about the skill level of promoters and training should have been provided according to their
skill level.
2. Data Updation should have been automated so as to avoid the manual process of data
gathering and putting in system.( Two Promoters with two computers should have been used
at the entrance and data Updation should have made mandatory after which the trolley forthe shopping should have provided so at to get the maximum data and remove the
complexity of the process)
3. Floor branding should have used to create all offers and their ways on the floor so as to ease
the communication OR a route map of all the offers on the floor should have done in such a
way that customer attain maximum articles in the floor.