Itinerant Retailers

Itinerant retailers are traders who have no fixed place of business. They keep moving with their wares from street to street or place to place, in search of customers.

Characteristics:

• They are small traders operating with limited resources.
• They normally deal in consumer products of daily use — toiletry items, fruits, vegetables, and the like.
• Their emphasis is on greater customer service, taking products right to the customer's doorstep.
• Having no fixed establishment, they keep their limited stock either at home or at some other place.

Common types of itinerant retailers in India:

• Peddlers and hawkers: Among the oldest retailers, still useful today. They are small producers or petty traders who carry goods on a bicycle, hand cart, cycle-rickshaw or on their heads and move from place to place, selling at the customer's doorstep. They deal in non-standardised, low-value products — toys, vegetables and fruits, fabrics, carpets, snacks, ice creams — and are found in residential streets, at exhibitions or fairs, and outside schools at lunch break. Advantage: convenient service. Caution: their goods are not always reliable in quality and price.
• Market traders: Small retailers who open their shops at different places on fixed days or dates (say every Saturday or alternate Saturdays). They may deal in one line of merchandise (fabrics, ready-made garments, toys, crockery) or be general merchants, mainly serving lower-income customers with low-priced daily-use items.
• Street traders (pavement vendors): Small retailers found where a large floating population gathers — near railway stations and bus stands — selling common-use items like stationery, eatables, ready-made garments, newspapers and magazines. Unlike market traders, they do not change their place of business so frequently. …