That’s what I felt what Pantaloon was telling me. (For those who don’t know – “Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited, is India’s leading retailer that operates multiple retail formats in both the value and lifestyle segment of the Indian consumer market – from here.”

I went there today to get some shirts. And I saw that they had an offer – depending on the number of shirts, you get a package deal. So as I was checking out one rack, I asked the salesman if those shirts were included in the offer. It wasn’t. He mentioned only the Rs. 499 shirts were part of the offer and showed me the rack where the board was kept.

So I started checking out shirts on that rack, selected one and was ready to select my next shirt. That’s when I saw the price on the shirt – Rs. 799. Out of curiosity, I asked the guy if this shirt was included. Nope. I finally figured out that there were just some two rows on sale. All the other shirts were not included.

Did Pantaloon do this after some consumer research where they figured if you keep the shirts-on-sale and shirts-not-on-sale together, people will end up buying both and more of the second? I just didn’t get it. All they had to do was say “on shirts of Rs. 499 only” on the rack-advertisement.

I tried telling the sales guy my experience had just gone awry and he was quite apologetic about it. He mentioned that he had issues with other customers too and would change the board soon. I finaly exited the store with no purchase and a very bad experience with Pantaloon.

For most businesses, the first mindset is ‘how do I make money out of this?’. It is never – ‘What can I provide to the customer?’ ‘What is the value add that the customer gets?’ I am not saying that we should not look at the viability of our business models but in the process of doing this, we often lose focus of the important – the customer.

Seth Godin has a post about how retail stores arrange first by brand, then type, then style and then size. It would be so much easier if they would arrange by type first and then by brand or even type and size first and then by brand. It is quite an obvious way of doing it but I have never seen any retail store do it, except for bookstores. It would be a disaster if they had put all the McGrawHill books together and then separated them by topic.

It is so sad to see stores display the sign “Customers are our greatest asset” but don’t have a system in place to take care of that asset.