Nanoretail operations in developing markets

Across much of the developing world, family-operated nanostores provide daily grocery needs to billions of poorly paid consumers. This highly fragmented retail channel is of critical importance to consumer brands as in many markets this is the largest retail channel. We characterize the empirical context in which these stores operate, as well as the intricate operations that manufacturers and distributors put in place to supply them with their goods. We then elaborate on modeling operations execution and operations strategies to expose critical tradeoffs that are distinct from those in organized retail in developed markets. We discuss research results that have demonstrated why many manufacturers choose to serve this market directly and at high frequency, why manufacturers invest considerable effort in deploying sales agents networks, how this channel manages to remain competitive with modern organized retail such as convenience store chains, and how digitization and novel financing solutions provide a further competitive advantage to the nanoretail channel. Finally, we discuss how to conduct research in this retail segment and provide examples of novel contexts and business models that may open up new areas of nanoretail research