The sampling frame for the Retail Investment Climate Survey 2006 was the list of retail stores regularly interviewed by AC Nielsen for inventory verification on behalf of distributors of branded goods. This list covered fast moving consumer goods stores (FMCG) and modern format stores in 41 cities across India. FMCG stores included grocers, general stores, chemists, food stores, and cosmetic stores; most were small family businesses. Modern format stores included outlets in the organized sector, such as Pantaloon and Reliance.
The following cities were covered by the survey: Greater Mumbai; Kolkata; Delhi; Chennai; Hyderabad; Bangalore; Ahmadabad; Pune; Surat; Kanpur; Jaipur; Luckow; Nagpur; Patna; Indore; Vadodara; Coimbatore; Bhopal; Ludhiana; Kochi; Visakhapatnam; Madurai; Nashik; Jamshedpur; Dhanbad; Faridabad; Vijayawada; Ghaziabad; Kozhikode; Gwalior; Chandigarh; Mysore; Hubli-Dharwad; Jalandhar; Kota; Bhubaneswar; Cuttack; Mangalore; Guntur; Noida; and Gurgaon.
The sample was stratified according to segment-specific criteria. FMCG stores were stratified based on turnover, number of salesmen, number of FMCG products, and presence of cooling equipment. Consumer durables and modern format stores were stratified based on turnover; high-end modern format stores were instead completely enumerated.
The sample size was determined so as to minimize the standard error in the sample variables, given the available resources for each surveying stratum. Once the sample size was determined, the sample was allocated to strata using Neymann's allocation rule.
