A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is often used to mean "supermarket".
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells in smaller quantities to consumers for a profit. Retailers are the final link in the supply chain from producers to consumers.
Distribution is the process of making a product or service available for the consumer or business user who needs it, and a distributor is a business involved in the distribution stage of the value chain. Distribution can be done directly by the producer or service provider, or using indirect channels with distributors or intermediaries. Distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix: the other three elements being product, pricing, and promotion.
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appearance in the middle of the 19th century, and permanently reshaped shopping habits, and the definition of service and luxury. Similar developments were under way in London, in Paris and in New York (Stewart's).
Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more items or products.
In the retail industry, facing is the practice of pulling products forward to the front of the display or shelf on which they are placed, typically with the items' labels facing forward. This is done to keep a store appearing neat and organized, and can help create the illusion of a perfectly stocked store.
Service Merchandise was a retail chain of catalog showrooms carrying jewelry, toys, sporting goods, and electronics. The company, which first began in 1934 as a five-and-dime store, was in existence for 68 years before ceasing operations in 2002.
Category management is a retailing and purchasing concept in which the range of products purchased by a business organization or sold by a retailer is broken down into discrete groups of similar or related products; these groups are known as product categories. It is a systematic, disciplined approach to managing a product category as a strategic business unit. The phrase "category management" was coined by Brian F. Harris.
Once the strategic plan is in place, retail managers turn to the more managerial aspects of planning. A retail mix is devised for the purpose of coordinating day-to-day tactical decisions. The retail marketing mix typically consists of six broad decision layers including product decisions, place decisions, promotion, price, personnel and presentation. The retail mix is loosely based on the marketing mix, but has been expanded and modified in line with the unique needs of the retail context. A number of scholars have argued for an expanded marketing, mix with the inclusion of two new Ps, namely, Personnel and Presentation since these contribute to the customer's unique retail experience and are the principal basis for retail differentiation. Yet other scholars argue that the Retail Format should be included. The modified retail marketing mix that is most commonly cited in textbooks is often called the 6 Ps of retailing.
Visual Merchandising is the practice in the retail industry of optimizing the presentation of products and services to better highlight their features and benefits. The purpose of such visual merchandising is to attract, engage, and motivate the customer towards making a purchase.
Dry goods is a historic term describing the type of product line a store carries, which differs by region. The term comes from the textile trade, and the shops appear to have spread with the mercantile trade across the British Empire as a means of bringing supplies and manufactured goods to far-flung settlements and homesteads. Starting in the mid-18th century, these stores began by selling supplies and textile goods to remote communities, and many customized the products they carried to the area's needs. This continued to be the trend well into the early 20th century. With the rise of department stores and catalog sales, the decline of dry goods stores began, and the term has largely fallen out of use. Some dry goods stores became department stores especially around the turn of the 20th century.
Retail design is a creative and commercial discipline that combines several different areas of expertise together in the design and construction of retail space. Retail design is primarily a specialized practice of architecture and interior design; however, it also incorporates elements of industrial design, graphic design, ergonomics, and advertising.
An electronic shelf label (ESL) system is used by retailers for displaying product pricing on shelves. The product pricing is automatically updated whenever a price is changed under the control of a central server. Typically, electronic display modules are attached to the front edge of retail shelving.
A marketing channel consists of the people, organizations, and activities necessary to transfer the ownership of goods from the point of production to the point of consumption. It is the way products get to the end-user, the consumer; and is also known as a distribution channel. A marketing channel is a useful tool for management, and is crucial to creating an effective and well-planned marketing strategy.
Cross merchandising is the retail practice of marketing or displaying products from different categories together, in order to generate additional revenue for the store, sometimes also known as add-on sales, incremental purchase or secondary product placement. Its main objective is to link different products that complement each other or can logically be used in association. This strategy also aims to improve overall customer experience by allowing them to pick up related goods at the same place instead of having to spend time searching for them.
Fashion merchandising can be defined as the planning and promotion of sales by presenting a product to the right market at the proper time, by carrying out organized, skillful advertising, using attractive displays, etc. Merchandising, within fashion retail, refers specifically to the stock planning, management, and control process. Fashion Merchandising is a job that is done world- wide. This position requires well-developed quantitative skills, and natural ability to discover trends, meaning relationships and interrelationships among standard sales and stock figures. In the fashion industry, there are two different merchandising teams: the visual merchandising team, and the fashion merchandising team.
Shelf-ready packaging (SRP) and retail-ready packaging (RRP) refers to the packaging of a product so that it is delivered to a retailer in packaging which is optimized for efficient stocking and sale.
Virtual store research is an extension of the traditional methods of marketing research. While marketing research employs techniques like focus groups, surveys and observation to better understand consumer decision-making, virtual store research uses these standard research techniques within a simulated store setting, delivered via computer. Virtual store research uses 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional computer simulation technology to create retail contexts that are as close to the real shopping experience as possible. This allows test consumers within the virtual environment to interact with store merchandise and make purchase decisions in a way that closely resembles real in-store behavior.
Assortment strategies are used by retailers in brick-and-mortar and ecommerce to decide on a daily basis how to allocate inventory to their stores as part of their merchandise planning processes. Such strategies are integral for retailers because they directly affect how their customers interact with their merchandise, and therefore, their brand. The decisions that these strategies help make are what to sell, where to sell it, when to sell it, whom to sell it to, and how much to sell.
The retail format influences the consumer's store choice and addresses the consumer's expectations. At its most basic level, a retail format is a simple marketplace, that is; a location where goods and services are exchanged. In some parts of the world, the retail sector is still dominated by small family-run stores, but large retail chains are increasingly dominating the sector, because they can exert considerable buying power and pass on the savings in the form of lower prices. Many of these large retail chains also produce their own private labels which compete alongside manufacturer brands. Considerable consolidation of retail stores has changed the retail landscape, transferring power away from wholesalers and into the hands of the large retail chains.
