Dr.A.Bkalkundrikar, principal Gogte College of Commerce, Dr.S.G.Kulkarni, Gogte College of Commerce, Dr.S.C.Chiniwar, IMER Belgaum, Shri.Dilip Kamat Social Activist and Shri.Vinod Deshpande Prof.VTU discussed about the same.
The small and local retailers should take the entry of malls as an opportunity to see where they fall behind or lack with the malls. Stopping malls, as reliance Fresh is being withdrawn from UP, West Bengal etc is not always possible.
Vinod Deshpande & Dr.S.C.Chiniwar spoke in favor of the malls very strongly and said that by coming of malls people will get more options, more variety and a huge choice before he/she buys anything. Malls will also in general benefit the government, consumers and the farmers. They also said that the local small trader would not feel the effect.
Dr. S.G.Kulkarni presented the other side of the coin. Due to malls the consumers fall prey to emotional buying and they normally end up buying things that they hardly ever use or wanted. All the malls are now equipped with CC tvs and this will cause breach of privacy. These malls will hit the small trader and these corporate retail chains will not survive for a long.
Infact nothing great came out of this discussion. The fact is that at least we had the chamber organize something of this kind of which I thank them. The points expressed by the learned lot were correct on their part. Some points though I really could not understand. CC tvs will cause breach of privacy- it can be done any where why only malls. I guess they were referring to those news bits that cams are put in trial rooms also, but that does not happen always. Malls will benefit the farmers. I doubt how? May be by contract farming etc but we are very far off from that space still.
In all a never-ending discussion. According to me face as it comes, change is inevitable, take it as it comes.
