Driving Outlet Expansion, Coverage and Assortment Growth in the Kandivali Belt: A Field Sales Execution Study of a Consumer Healthcare Company in Mumbai

Author

Vaishnavi Rajiv Jadhav, Mr. Mayur Jaybhay

Abstract

 Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies in India still depend heavily on traditional General Trade (GT) outlets, yet outlet-level performance is often judged by coverage counts rather than by the quality of servicing. This paper reports a two-month field study conducted from 15 May to 15 July 2026 in the Kandivali belt of Mumbai with Haleon India Pvt. Ltd., a consumer healthcare company. Using a descriptive, exploratory and participant-observation design, the study examined four aspects of GT sales execution: outlet expansion, breadth of beat coverage, quality and regularity of outlet servicing, and in-store retail execution, including assortment and point-of-sale materials (POSM). Data were gathered through direct observation, retailer interaction, order booking on a sales force automation application, market mapping and discussions with area sales in-charges. Field tracking covered 415 existing registered GT outlets across 24 beats. During visits and market mapping, 28 outlets were identified as under-serviced; because outlets were not audited exhaustively, this is a count of observed gaps and not a measure of the share of outlets serviced. A further 95 new outlets were onboarded, expanding the active base by about 23% to 510 outlets. Observations on retail execution suggest that availability, assortment, visibility and regular servicing operate as interdependent elements. The findings indicate that outlet counts alone are an incomplete measure of territory performance, and that routine market mapping and updated outlet data can improve servicing consistency. The study is limited by its short duration, single territory and purposive sampling, so the findings are indicative rather than generalisable.

Keywords

General Trade, FMCG distribution, beat planning, market mapping, retail execution, assortment, consumer healthcare

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