All issues › Volume 1, Issue 1, July – August 2026
Everyday Low Pricing as a Structural, Not a Promotional, Choice: A Qualitative Case Analysis of DMart’s Cost Leadership in Indian Value Retail
Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce, Corporate Secretaryship and Accounting and Finance, Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur – 603203, Tamil Nadu, India
Abstract
Everyday low pricing (EDLP) is conventionally studied as a pricing decision — a choice between a stable low price and a high–low promotional cycle. This paper argues that in the Indian organised value-retail context, EDLP is more accurately understood as a downstream consequence of an upstream cost architecture, and that firms which adopt the price format without first building the cost structure cannot sustain it. The argument is developed through a qualitative single-case analysis of Avenue Supermarts Limited, operator of the DMart chain, selected as a revelatory case in Yin’s sense. The analysis is deliberately non-financial: it examines the configuration of decisions — property ownership rather than leasing, cluster-based geographic expansion, deliberate assortment restriction, accelerated supplier settlement, minimal advertising, and a no-frills store environment — through which a low cost position is constructed, and then applies a VRIO assessment to determine which elements of that configuration are genuinely difficult to imitate. The paper finds that no single element of the model is proprietary; the defensibility lies in the mutual reinforcement among elements, which imposes on an imitator the burden of adopting the whole configuration rather than selecting from it. The paper further considers whether the configuration remains defensible against quick-commerce entrants whose competitive logic substitutes delivery speed for price, and argues that the threat is segment-specific rather than general. Implications are drawn for retail strategy research and for the study of competitive advantage in emerging-market organised retail. As a qualitative case study drawing on publicly available strategic information, the paper offers analytical rather than statistical generalisation, and its propositions are stated in a form open to subsequent empirical testing.
Keywords: everyday low pricing, cost leadership, organised retail, DMart, VRIO, competitive advantage, case study
How to cite
Jenesiszodykha, V. (2026). Everyday Low Pricing as a Structural, Not a Promotional, Choice: A Qualitative Case Analysis of DMart’s Cost Leadership in Indian Value Retail. Imaginex International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Reviews, 1(1), 6–10.