The Sale Is Not Over When the Customer Pays!

A customer walks into a store, buys a pack of biscuits, pays for it and walks out. Nothing unusual. But later, the customer wonders whether the other brand offered better value.

Sounds trivial? Perhaps. But that is precisely where post-purchase cognitive dissonance begins.

It need not be an expensive automobile, a diamond necklace or a premium smartphone. It could be a packet of sugar, an expensive bar of chocolate or even a box of branded apples! The value of the purchase does not necessarily determine the extent of dissatisfaction. 

The feeling of having made the wrong choice can be just as real, irrespective of the amount spent.

Behavioural scientists call this Post-Purchase Cognitive Dissonance – the discomfort or doubt a customer experiences after making a purchase, when questions about the decision begin to surface.

A competing product, an attractive offer, a negative review or even a casual comment from a friend can trigger this feeling.

What happens when the customer wants to return the product?

Refund and exchange practices differ across countries. 

In many Western markets, retailers voluntarily offer generous return policies as a matter of customer service and relationship building, alongside statutory consumer rights. The law, of course, varies by country and product category.

In India, there is no blanket legal obligation under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, requiring a retailer to refund a customer simply because they have changed their mind about a purchase. 

However, this does not absolve retailers of their obligations. Defective goods, misleading descriptions, unfair trade practices and other legitimate consumer grievances are covered by the law. 

Section 39 empowers Consumer Commissions to order refunds in appropriate cases. E-commerce businesses also have specific obligations under the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020.

There is another interesting dimension to this phenomenon.

Think about the last time a retailer, whether a neighbourhood store or an XXL retail chain, requested you to write a short online review after a purchase.

That request is almost like holding up a mirror immediately after the customer has made a decision. The review reflects whether the purchase has settled comfortably in the customer's mind or whether a little doubt still lingers.

A positive review is an affirmation. A negative one is often an indication that the customer's expectations and experience have parted ways.

So, what should retailers do?

The responsibility does not end at the billing counter. 

A genuine thank-you, product education, reassurance, responsive after-sales service and transparent return policies can go a long way.

Retailers spend considerable time and money acquiring customers. Yet, many forget to nurture the customer after the transaction.

Perhaps it is time we looked beyond conversion rates and sales per square foot.

The real test of a successful retail transaction is not just whether the customer bought the product, but whether the customer continues to feel good about having bought it.

After all, a sale is an event. Customer confidence is a relationship.

And relationships are what build retail businesses.

Empty Pendrive, Full Auditorium

Five thousand MBA students. Twenty-one years as a visiting faculty. Yet as I walked on stage at KREA University, I was nervous, as though it were my first outing.

Strange, isn't it? Experience is supposed to calm you. Then it struck me. 

When a pendrive is empty, it can store more. The human brain is no different, except that the mind carries its load of past information in the intellect. 

Perhaps nerves are just the mind making room.

The topic was quick commerce and its impact on the distribution channel. The room held over 100 students, 20-somethings who have lived on ten-minute delivery since Covid. They did not need an explainer. They needed a story.

So I told them mine. In October 2015, I started OyeThere in Chennai. The promise: delivery in 30 to 300 minutes. 

We began with tender coconuts bought from a roadside vendor, then added groceries, books, baby products, Rajinikanth T-shirts before Kabali, and clay Ganesha idols at Chaturthi.

The seed money came from a few friends, and it lasted about two financial quarters.

Four delivery boys. Up to ten orders a day. 25 different retailers whose goods we delivered. Expenses covered with the seed capital from day one, with no marketing dollars to burn.

Investors who had promised immense support backed out after the initial tranch, citing market conditions. We went dry in less than 18 months. New Investors asked, "Why so fast? What is the hurry?" 

We had traction and break-even, but no one willing to wait.

I was ahead of my time, and I had no patient capital. Quick commerce, as I realised much later in life, needed years of losses before the habit forms. 

On 1 November 2016, I suspended operations. 

Failure? I call it tuition, self-funded and worth every paisa. While I learned a lot earlier this year at Harvard Business School with my year-long Senior Leadership Course, the ground learning remains unmatched. 

Today the same habit has over 60 million monthly users in India and about USD 9 billion in sales in half a year, according to Redseer. 

India's dense cities, UPI and kirana habit gave the idea a home. Timing matters. So does geography.

But the rest of the West is unable to catch up - Getir shut its instant delivery in Europe and the US in 2024. 

The auditorium answered with energy. 

The 100-minute session, with its Q&A, was clearly enjoyed, and the students' kind acknowledgements and network requests on LinkedIn afterwards said so.

I walked in nervous and walked out lighter, like an empty pendrive, ready for more.

Thank you, KREA University. You taught the teacher.

Trust Is Built One Promise at a Time

On the evening of 28 Oct. ‘26, at the Andhra Chamber of Commerce in Nandanam, hosted by the Madras Management Association, I spoke on a question I keep returning to: why do Indian shoppers trust DMart so deeply?

The answer is not in a campaign. It is in a price tag, a weighing scale and a bill that add up every single time.

Radhakishan Damani came from the stock market, yet chose to own shops and compound them patiently. The first DMart opened in Mumbai in 2002. 

Today there are 518 stores, 86 of them added in the last twelve months, and the count has doubled since March 2021. Quarterly revenue reached INR 19,206 crore in Q2 FY27, up 18%. 

Nothing flashy, just one promise repeated, cluster by cluster.

Harvard's Frances Frei and Anne Morriss describe trust as a triangle of authenticity, logic and empathy. Retail tests all three at the billing desk. 

Our shopper doubts hidden charges, inflated MRPs, short weights and being treated like a number. She rewards the same low price every day, a full shelf and an honest bill. Every doubt is really a design brief.

I walked the room through seven pillars of trust, using the RetAil KAVACCH™ lens. 

Know the truth about your shopper. Predict disappointment before it happens. Price honestly by engineering cost out. Choose your assortment with care and say no often. Serve the job she hires you for. Deliver without waste. 

Finally, let people keep the promise, because systems set it but a person at the shelf delivers it. AI predicts; people care.

The most debated part was the contrast with quick commerce. 

Dark stores sprint, adding thousands of outlets in five years, while DMart compounds with a few hundred large ones. 

Neither is wrong. 

They are hired for different jobs: urgency on one side, the planned monthly shop on the other. Trust comes from doing one job reliably.

I closed with a simple 90-day plan any business can start on Monday. 

Know, in the first month: pick three numbers about your customer and watch them daily. Fix, in the second: cut one cost she never notices and prune the tail of your range. Keep, in the third: train your people on the promise, then publish it and hold yourself to it.

I left the room reminded of how much a small business can borrow from a giant. 

Trust is not a budget line. It is a habit, practised one bill at a time, and any retailer willing to practise it can build it.

Which of the seven pillars is your weakest? Start there.

The Airport That Taught Me to Travel as a Student

On 24 May 2008, Bangalore's new airport opened its doors, and I stood in a terminal that had been built, shop by shop, from an empty plan. As Head of Travel Retail at BIAL, I had spent two years answering one question: what does a passenger in a hurry actually want to buy? 

Nobody in India had the answer then. We had to learn it on the floor.

That habit of learning on the floor never left me. Through Royal Enfield's dealerships, Levista's distribution and the shelves of Indian Terrain, I kept returning to the same classroom: the shop itself. 

So when I finally took my maiden trip to the US this August, it was no surprise that I carried that classroom with me.

Strangely, the trip had waited long. Opportunities to travel had come my way several times, and I had refrained. 

Then things moved swiftly: my decision to join Harvard Business School, the funding arrangements, the visa process. Before I knew it, I was on a flight to Boston.

I landed on a sunny afternoon, excited like a kid. By the time I reached the campus, the excitement had turned gentler. I felt like a child on the first day at a new pre-school: wide-eyed, slightly nervous, wanting to touch everything.

For three weeks, I walked the corridors of the various buildings, the Baker Library, our hostel rooms and, most importantly, the classrooms. 

Each step carried the thought that legends have lived and walked here. Some places make you quieter, and they make you want to deserve the seat you sit in.

Yet my fondest memories also lie outside the campus walls. The evening walks. The train and bus rides. The retail explorations across town, where every store was a case study and every queue a lesson in design and patience. 

A retailer never travels as a tourist. He travels as a student of the shop floor.

What struck me was how the two classrooms spoke to each other. The case method sharpened my questions in the morning, and the shop floor tested them by evening. Frameworks without floors are just theory. 

Floors without frameworks are just habit. Real learning lives where the two meet.

Sitting on the student's bench after decades in the industry was humbling. I have taught in business schools since 2005, yet listening more than speaking reminded me how much remains unlearned.

A month after returning, I still reminisce about those good times, and the lessons keep surfacing in ordinary moments.

Perhaps that is where it all began, back in 1997, behind a Baskin Robbins counter in Chennai, learning to scoop. A good scoop is never about the ice cream alone. It is about the right portion, the customer's smile and the patience to get it right, again and again. 

Twenty-nine years and a Harvard classroom later, I am still that beginner with the scooper in hand, and I hope I never outgrow it.

Boston, thank you. You have changed how I look at everything that comes next.

The Day We Thank Our Tools

Ayudha Puja was performed at my office on 19 Oct. 2026, with my Father leading the rituals, as it has been in our family for decades. Observed on the ninth day of Navratri, it is gratitude to the instruments that give us income, dignity and purpose.

So I wiped my MacBook clean and placed it with my iPad, iPhone, a pen, my notebook, the charging cable and plug, alongside photos and idols of Gods. 

This year brought a new addition: Claude App. I kept its window open on my device as a quiet thank you for its support over the last few months.

For me, the tradition is inseparable from retail. My first tool was an ice-cream scoop at Baskin Robbins, Chennai, in 1997, between classes. It taught me consumer behaviour, because I watched who walked in, what they chose and why.

Later, the tools kept changing. At Foodworld, Benetton and Indian Terrain, it was the shelves that held the SKUs. At Bengaluru International Airport, where I pioneered India's Travel Retail industry, it was every square inch of the passenger areas, because each one fed the business. 

At Cafe Coffee Day and Levista, it was the coffee machine and the stacks of packaged coffee.

Every retail morning begins with a tool being switched on. A billing machine beeps. A packaging line hums. A shutter rolls up. A showroom floor is polished, and a motorcycle is wiped by someone who treats it like family.

Whether it is coffee powder, rice or atta, the journey begins hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometres away. So the entire supply chain worships its tools. 

Fuel pump owners garland their tanks and mark the nozzles with turmeric or sandal paste. Truck drivers and quick commerce riders pray over their beloved vehicles.

But the person who taught me this never gave a lecture on it.

My Father worked on the factory floor at ITC Ltd for 33 years, and he simply loved his tools. His spanner, pliers, screwdriver, hammer and files were treated like colleagues. He rode one bicycle for over two decades, polished and cleaned every weekend. 

He wore one classic pair of Aviators for three decades, until they finally gave up. And one fine day, 20 years ago, he lost his beloved early 1980s Favre-Leuba watch.

He never taught me how to maintain tools. He simply lived it, and I watched. Today, when someone wonders why my car still looks new, or why my watches do not look 10, 12 or 18 years old, I think of Dad and smile.

Call it genes, if you like. That is how we take care of our tools, because we are nothing without them.

Will “ResTech” Be Retail's Next Big Thing?

Last week, I ordered a coffee on the Starbucks app while sitting right in front of the barista, who was brewing someone else's order. I was there to meet a potential client who was running late, and I didn't want to wait for my caffeine fix. 

One tap on the app, one eye contact with the barista, a nod of acknowledgement, and within seconds my coffee was ready. No queue, no cashier, no friction.

The meeting then moved to a Taj property on OMR. I sat in the lobby with a coffee shop right in front of me, and the staff were nowhere to be seen. I waved at the lady managing the adjacent store, and she fetched the barista for me. 

As my guests and I started chatting, she handed me an A3-size menu spread across finger foods, soups and coffees. We stuck to the basics.

The contrast stayed with me. One experience was seamless because ordering was in my hands. The other depended on spotting a human, waving them down, and waiting for a menu.

What AI is for tech, self-ordering could be for food and beverage, especially in India. Almost every restaurant here has a dozen waiters, each managing a cluster of three to four tables. In peak hours, they run from one table to the next, taking orders, fixing mistakes, fetching water and chasing the kitchen. 

We call it service, but much of it is order-taking.

Imagine a different flow. A guest walks in and opens an aggregator-style app. She orders, chooses takeaway or dine-in, and enters the table number. The kitchen receives the order directly, and the food arrives carried by a waiter, not a robot. 

Hospitality stays human, and only the order-taking is automated.

Is "ResTech" the next big thing? 

I think it could be. Waiters would spend their time on welcoming, recommending and care, instead of scribbling orders. Errors would fall, table turns would speed up, and the kitchen would see demand in real time.

It also changes what restaurants compete on. 

Today, ambience carries the experience. Tomorrow, the ordering process itself could become the experience: how fast, how easy, how personal. That changes the equation completely.

Am I dreaming? Perhaps. But Indians already scan, tap and pay without a second thought. The habit exists. 

The restaurants that blend technology with warmth will own the next decade of dining.

Will this ever happen? I believe it already has begun, one coffee at a time.

Retail in Detail: The Slides Were My Own Scars

When I built the masterclass for the Crescent School of Business, I expected to be teaching. Slide after slide, I found myself checking a deck against my own memory instead.

Take the slide on India's 87 percent unorganised market. I met that number at 19, behind a Baskin Robbins counter in Chennai. 

The slow-moving flavours were not the problem. The way we presented them was. Bundle them into a sundae and they sold. 

The kirana does this by instinct every day, matching what it stocks to who walks in. The organised sector has spent thirty years trying to learn that instinct at scale.

Then came the slide on those who succumbed, with music chains and the early supermarkets on it. I had worked in two of them. At Musicworld and Foodworld, 

India's first organised grocery chain, I saw the stores were not short of shoppers. They were short of answers. When we fixed the layout and began ordering on store-level data, private-label sales grew 150 percent in six months. Today's champions, Vishal Mega Mart and Zudio, run on private labels. 

The idea was right early. The cash and systems arrived late.

The ecosystem slide shows the mall as the landlord layer. I sat on that side of the table at Central, leasing the spaces nobody planned for: coffee, books, game zones and food courts. 

A mall is not a building. It is a tenant mix, and each wrong tenant costs the other shops their footfall. 

That is why, when I tell students that retail leasing rose 20 percent in the first half of 2026, I tell them it is the quietest vote of confidence in stores. 

Mono-brands showed me the next lesson. 

Taking Benetton in the South from one store to six meant appointing franchisees, and the truth was in who we chose, not how many. 

Levi's at 500 stores and Bata crossing 2,000 are the same story, a brand scaled by partners it trusted.

Airports and cafés then pushed the idea further. Bangalore's airport retail taught me that a passenger with time is a different customer, so we tied rents to passenger numbers. 

Opening 140 Café Coffee Day outlets, from stadiums to IITs, taught me the reverse: the same format wins or loses on its address.

My least comfortable slide is quick commerce. In 2015 I launched a hyperlocal delivery platform in Chennai promising groceries in 30 to 300 minutes. 

We were early. There was no UPI habit, no dark-store density and no investor appetite. 

When Blinkit and Zepto reached ten minutes, I knew exactly which ingredient had been missing.

Covid completed the picture at Levista Coffee. Points of sale rose from 27,000 to over 77,000 and e-commerce grew about tenfold, but only because we served the kirana and the app together. 

That is the answer to the question the students asked, why stores keep opening. 

Reliance, Lenskart, Zudio and Titan have understood what I learned at that counter: shoppers do not choose a channel. 

They choose convenience, trust and the person across the counter.

For the careers slide I had no new advice, only the old one. Start where the customer is. 

Every role I listed, from category and stores to leasing, hiring and training, begins with that. 

It is the reason my Strategy Advisory & Consulting Firm Miles2Go offers MBA students, paid internships in market research and data analytics.

India's retail story is still early. The people in that auditorium may well write the next chapter.