By Adrian Terron, Executive Director, Retail & Shopper Practice, Nielsen India, and Shrikant Kulkarni, Director, Retailer Services, Nielsen India 

The recent phenomenon of event weeks is rewriting the rules of modern trade. Never before in the history of Indian retail have shoppers taken so fervently to this marketing strategy by India’s modern trade retailers.

There are now two calendars that Indian shoppers have pencilled into their memories. First, the one that has always existed – festivals, celebrations, personal events like birthdays, anniversaries and occasions like marriages. The second and more recent addition is a series of events within modern retail that have become exciting fixtures within shoppers’ annual calendars.

Diwali, arguably the most popular festival in the Indian sub-continent now finds itself accompanied by events that have been created by India’s inventive retailers. Event weeks built around national holidays like Republic Day, Labour Day and Independence Day are drawing in new shoppers and ensuring that organized retail remains a firmly entrenched part of the urban Indian’s shopping trip.

To better understand the dynamics of Indian retail’s big-ticket events, we studied a select set of markets and banners synonymous with creating and conducting events.

By looking at the five key markets of Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad for large super and hypermarket chains, we were able to deconstruct the events, their impact and the underlying category movements by examining weekly sales data.