Petro Retailing: Enhancing Site Potential and Performance Management A case study of IOCL ROs in Chandigarh Dr.

. Suresh Malodia Assistant Professor Senior Scale University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun smalodia@ddn.upes.ac.in Dr. A.K Jain Assistant Professor Selection Grade University of Petroleum & Energy Studies, Dehradun akjain@ddn.upes.ac.in

Abstract For about hundred and forty odd years, Petrol existed as an undifferentiated commodity in India. No serious efforts were made for augmenting and differentiating this commodity. More importantly, only three government regulated petrol selling companies enjoying an almost monopoly status, were running the business, driven by the social objectives set by the government, along with the prices of petrol. Although the companies demanded autonomy on regular basis, they never realized that they would be compelled to market petrol and fight with each other for market share and since the war for capturing others market share was never fought during all these years, marketing was obliviously considered as the least required function in the petrol selling business. Even the consumers never thought that they will be standing on the petrol pumps thinking about the brand of petrol to choose from a number of brands available. Today the marketing of petrol has changed from what it used to be in yester-years and hence petrol is on its way to transformation from being an undifferentiated commodity to a branded product (Indian petrol Industry Towards Branded Fuels. 2003 ICMR). This paper discusses the marketing efforts undertaken by IOCL in Chandigarh and evaluates a variety of factors responsible for performance of ROs viz., location, facilities, price differential, trading area, Retail visual identity (RVI) etc. A case study approach was adopted to compare the performing ROs against poor performing ROs. Evaluation of site potential and actual performance at RO was conducted; thereby discovering ways to improve the performance of underperforming ROs and suggest some non fuel segments for the outperforming Retail Outlets. Calculation of Customer Service Index and housekeeping index to check quality of service being provided to customers was done and then scores were assigned to ROs on this basis. Ros were also scored based on their RVI.

Keywords: Petro Retailing, RVI, Site Potential,