Future of Bazaar..

Big Bazaar (Pantaloon's retail venture) has partnered with Future Bazaar to launch the initiative http://www.futurebazaar.com. I am watching the banner ads flashing on almost every news website so finally went on to check a few of the offers. Here are a couple of deals that I checked -

1) Transcend 2 GB pen drive (product id 60054064) for Rs. 1099 for the list price of Rs. 2490 and thus offering a discount of 1391 Rs. (a whooping 55%). Cool and eye catching but the actual product probably packed sometime in March 2007 is available in the market for Rs. 930 without a proper bill but with the same warranty. I am saying that because I bought one for my friend just a month back and computer peripherals being a decreasing cost industry, the prices go down after every couple of month. To add to it, even the actual marked price is not 2490 and its something like 1700. May be they are disposing up the old stock but still its highly overpriced (Rs 170, 18%) than what is available in local market (Richie street in Chennai for me).

All the computer goodies were over priced and which are available in the local market at much cheaper rate. But the argument in favour is that they are charging the cost of convenience but then, if this is the future of bazaar then perhpas future looks glim. Unorganized trade is much more efficient than this so called organized retail. God save the poors. I guess that its not long when people have to buy Himachal apples branded as American Apples from some fruit shoppe located in posh locality at a price 4 times higher than the price charged by fruit vendors. The cost difference is due to organized retail. Cool, so let's wait for the Wal Mart, K Mart, Sears and other big brothers.