Retailers undertake various business activities and perform functions that add value to the offerings they make to their target segments. Retailers provide convenient location, stock and appropriate mix of merchandise in suitable packages in accordance with the needs of customers. The four major activities carried out by retailers are: Arrange for assortment of offerings Breaking quantity Holding stock Extending services Arranging Assortment An assortment is a retailer’s selection of merchandise. It includes both the depth and breadth of products carried. Retailers have to select the combination of assortments from various categories. The assortments must include substitutable items of multiple brands and price points. They should be distinguished on account of physical dimensions and attributes e.g., color or flavor. The small retailer takes assortment decision on the basis of his experience; on the other hand retailers from organized retailing depend on a detailed study of past trends and future projections. Retailers Continue reading
Retail Management
Application of Big Data in Retail Industry
Information technology is evolving rapidly, and now we are living in the artificial intelligence (AI) age which is considered a smart society where Internet of Things (IoTs) connecting to intelligent devices. Thanks to the advances in technology, retail is among the industries that are most affected by digital transformation. With this transformation, the consumer is changing their shopping experience and behavior from seeking products or shops, comparing, reading reviews to in-store, online and finally writing reviews, contacting customer service. The growing demands of modern consumers for excellent shopping possibilities gives the modern retailer room to innovate and understand shopper’s behavior better in response to the need of modern consumers. Retailers are dealing with a quickly changing retail landscape and newer competitive threats due to the new and improved changes in technology. To address these changes, retailers are now using big data solutions to collect massive amounts of data to gather Continue reading
Retail: Meaning and Definition
The distribution of consumer products begins with the producer and ends at the ultimate consumer. Between the producer and the consumer there is a middleman—the retailer, who links the producers and the ultimate consumers. Retailing is defined as a conclusive set of activities or steps used to sell a product or a service to consumers for their personal or family use. It is responsible for matching individual demands of the consumer with supplies of all the manufacturers. The word ‘retail’ is derived from the French work retailer, meaning ‘to cut a piece off’ or ‘to break bulk’. A retailer is a person, agent, agency, company, or organization which is instrumental in reaching the goods, merchandise, or services to the ultimate consumer. Retailers perform specific activities such as anticipating customer’s wants, developing assortments of products, acquiring market information, and financing. A common assumption is that retailing involves only the sale of Continue reading
Retail Store’s Front Design Considerations
A retail store’s front is the first impression that consumer has for a store. Three components make up retail store’s front namely, front configurations, window displays and store’s entrances. 1. The Store-front Configuration There are three possible front configurations namely, Straight front Angled front and Arcade front. The “straight front” is a store configuration that runs parallel to the side-walk, street, mall or a parking lot. Usually the only break in the front is a small recess for an entrance. This store front design is operationally efficient because it does not reduce the interior selling space. However, it lacks consumer appeal because it is monotonous and less attractive than either of the other configurations. Window shoppers can inspect only a small part of any display from anyone position when retailers use the straight configuration. Another limitation is that reflective glare from windows can inhibit window-shopping, while heavy foot traffic and Continue reading
Retail Organization and Classification of Retail Units
Retail Organization The term retail organization refers to the basic format or structure of a retail business designed to cater to the needs of the end customer. Recently, some scholars have started referring to India as a nation of shopkeepers. This epithet has its roots in the huge number of retail enterprises in India, which were over 12 million in 2003. About 78% of these are small family businesses utilizing only household labor. Retail firms may be independently owned, parts of a retail chain, operated as a franchisee, leased departments, owned by manufacturers or wholesalers, consumers owned or co-operative society. A retail unit could be owned by: Manufacturer (e.g., company owned retail outlets) Wholesaler (e.g., Vastra outlet in Rajouri in New Delhi) Independent retailer (Chanakya Sweet Shop near Hazratganj in Lucknow) Consumer (consumer owned grocery stores in man y residential societies) Co-operative society (e.g., Mother Dairy milk booths in Delhi) Continue reading
Macro Environment Factors in Retailing
What do you mean by retail environment? A retail marketing environment consists of the external actors and forces that affect the retailers ability to develop and maintain successful transactions and relationships with its target customers. We can distinguish between the retailers’ micro environment and macro environment. The macro environment consists of legal, social, economic and technological forces. Demographic Environment The first environmental fact of interest to retailers is population because people make up markets. Retailers are keenly interested in the size of the population, its geographical distribution, density, mobility trends, age distribution and social ethnic and religious structure. Demographic structure is seldom static for long and changes in its composition often test the residency of a marketing firm. Further, these changes influence the behavior of consumers which, in turn, will have a direct impact in the retailer’s business. The ripples of these changes will reach the organization forcing it to Continue reading