Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the 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.
A shopping cart, trolley, or buggy, also known by a variety of other names, is a wheeled cart supplied by a shop or store, especially supermarkets, for use by customers inside the premises for transport of merchandise as they move around the premises, while shopping, prior to heading to the checkout counter, cashiers or tills. Increasing the amount of goods a shopper can collect increases the quantities they are likely to purchase in a single trip, boosting store profitability.
Shoplifting, shop theft, retail theft, or retail fraud is the theft of [goods from a retail establishment during business hours. The terms shoplifting and shoplifter are not usually defined in law, and generally fall under larceny. In the retail industry, the word shrinkage is used to refer to merchandise lost by shoplifting, but the word also includes loss by other means, such as waste, uninsured damage to products, and theft by store employees.
The Oregon Bottle Bill is a container-deposit legislation enacted in the U.S. state of Oregon in 1971 that went into effect in October 1972. It was the first such legislation in the United States. It was amended in 2007 and 2011. It requires applicable beverages in applicable sizes in glass, plastic or metal cans or bottles sold in Oregon to be returnable with a minimum refund value. The refund value was initially 5 cents until April 1, 2017, when it increased to 10 cents. The Oregon Legislature has given the Oregon Liquor Control Commission the authority to administer and enforce the Bottle Bill. Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative (OBRC), a private cooperative owned by retailers and beverage distributors, administers the collection and transportation of returned containers and keeps all the unclaimed deposits. Materials from returned containers are sold by the OBRC and proceeds are handed out to beverage distributors. In 2022, the bottle bill was expanded to include canned wine, which will become eligible for redemption on July 1, 2025.
Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the retailer directly or by searching among alternative vendors using a shopping search engine, which displays the same product's availability and pricing at different e-retailers. As of 2020, customers can shop online using a range of different computers and devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers and smartphones.
ShopRite is an American retailers' cooperative of supermarkets with stores in six states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Self-checkouts (SCOs), also known as assisted checkouts (ACOs) or self-service checkouts, are machines that provide a mechanism for customers to complete their own transaction from a retailer without needing a traditional staffed checkout. When using SCOs, customers scan item barcodes before paying for their total shop without needing one-to-one staff assistance. Self-checkouts are used mainly in supermarkets, although they are not uncommon in department or convenience stores. Most self-checkout areas are supervised by at least one staff member, often assisting customers process transactions, correcting prices, or otherwise providing service.
Brick and mortar is an organization or business with a physical presence in a building or other structure. The term brick-and-mortar business is often used to refer to a company that possesses or leases retail shops, factory production facilities, or warehouses for its operations. More specifically, in the jargon of e-commerce businesses in the 2000s, brick-and-mortar businesses are companies that have a physical presence and offer face-to-face customer experiences.
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, music, history, anime, fitness, politics, and sports, among others. Registration is not available, except for staff, and users typically post anonymously. As of 2022, 4chan receives more than 22 million unique monthly visitors, of which approximately half are from the United States.
Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that involves social media and online media that supports social interaction, and user contributions to assist online buying and selling of products and services.
The following is a comparison of the features of notable shopping cart software packages available. Some such shopping cart software is extensible through third-party software components and applications. As such, the features listed below may not encompass all possible features for a given software package. The software listed here is but a fraction of all such packages on the market.
An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of a number of English-language imageboards.
Amazon Fresh is a subsidiary of the American e-commerce company Amazon in Seattle, Washington. It is a grocery retailer with physical stores and delivery services in some U.S. cities, as well as some international cities, such as Berlin, Hamburg, London, Milan, Munich, Rome, and some other locations in Singapore and India.
"Shopping while black" is a phrase used for the type of marketplace discrimination that is also called "consumer racial profiling", "consumer racism" or "racial profiling in a retail setting", as it applies to black people. Shopping while black is the experience of being denied service or given poor service because one is black.
In marketing, abandonment rate is a term associated with the use of virtual shopping carts. Also known as "shopping cart abandonment". Although shoppers in brick and mortar stores rarely abandon their carts, abandonment of virtual shopping carts is quite common. Marketers can count how many of the shopping carts used in a specified period result in completed sales versus how many are abandoned. The abandonment rate is the ratio of the number of abandoned shopping carts to the number of initiated transactions or to the number of completed transactions.
Omnichannel retail strategy, originally also known in the U.K. as bricks and clicks, is a business model by which a company integrates both offline (bricks) and online (clicks) presences, sometimes with the third extra flips.
The economics of Christmas are significant because Christmas is typically a high-volume selling season for goods suppliers around the world. Sales increase dramatically as people purchase gifts, decorations, and supplies to celebrate. In the U.S., the "Christmas shopping season" starts as early as October. In Canada, merchants begin advertising campaigns just before Halloween, and step up their marketing following Remembrance Day on 11 November. In the UK and Ireland, the Christmas shopping season starts from mid-November, around the time when high street Christmas lights are turned on. In the United States, it has been calculated that about one fifth of retail sales to one quarter of all personal spending takes place during the Christmas/holiday shopping season. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that expenditure in department stores nationwide rose from $20.8 billion in November 2004 to $31.9 billion in December 2004, an increase of 54 percent. In other sectors, the pre-Christmas increase in spending was even greater, due to a November through December buying surge of 100% in bookstores and 170% in jewelry stores. In the same year employment in American retail stores rose from 1.6 million to 1.8 million in the two months leading up to Christmas. This means that while consumers might spend more during this season, they also are given increased employment opportunities as sales rise to meet the increased demand.
Maplebear Inc., doing business as Instacart, is an American delivery company based in San Francisco that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada accessible via a website and mobile app. It allows customers to order groceries from participating retailers with the shopping being done by a personal shopper. The company also provides alcohol delivery in states and provinces where it is allowed. It has partnerships with 1,500 retail banners comprising 85,000 stores. Instacart reaches nearly 98% of SNAP households, offering delivery services from nearly 180 retail banners, including ALDI, Food Lion, Publix, The Save Mart Companies and Walgreens, spanning more than 30,000 stores across all 50 states and Washington D.C. Since its founding, Instacart Marketplace has powered more than $100 billion of GTV and over 900 million orders with approximately 20 billion items ordered.
A parcel locker is an automated postal box that allows users for a self-service collection of parcels and oversize letters as well as the dispatch of parcels.
Cart Narcs is an American group of volunteers from Burbank, California, formed by Sebastian Davis, also known as "Agent Sebastian".
