The Impact of the Hockey-Stick Phenomenon on the Retail Industry in India: Pre and During COVID-19

Abstract

The hockey-stick sales phenomenon has been less examined in the earlier studies and doesn’t receive much attention due to the cumbersome process involved in the change of sales policies in the companies and the overall restructuring of the supply chain management. The process is costly and mostly the hockey-stick sales phenomenon has an adverse impact on the profitability of companies. However, this was not observed in the case of the companies belonging to the retail industry in India. Our study shows that hockey-stick sales have a positive impact on the profitability of the companies measured by Profit After Tax (PAT) while on the other hand during the COVID-19 period, the hockey-stick sales phenomenon appears to impact negatively the profitability of the companies specifically. The results could not be generalized as the results are industry specific, but the methodology could be applied to a different industrial sector in order to study the relationship between hockey-stick sales and profitability and its impact on the performance of the companies.