Marketing

• Retailing: the process by which organizations sell goods and services to consumers for their personal use
• Retailer adds or subtracts value from the offering with its image, inventory, service quality, location, and pricing policy

• Merchandise mix: the total set of all products offered for sale by a retailer, including all product lines sold to all consumer groups
• Product line: is a set of related products retailer offers

• Tailor their strategies to the level of service they offer
• Customers who demand higher levels of service must be willing to pay for that service
• Self service retailers: Make their product selection without any assistance, they often must bring theor own bags or containers to carry their purchases and they may even handle the checkout process with self service scanners
• Full service retailers: provide supporting services such as gift wrapping, and offer trained sales associates who can help us, alteration services
• Limited service retailers: fall in between self-service and full service retailers. Offer credit ad merchandise return. Customers select merchandise without much assistance

• Merchandise assortment: selection of product it sells, has two dimensions: breadth and depth
• Merchandise breadth: variety; is the number of different product lines available
• Narrow assortment: convenience stores, find limited selection of product lines
• Broad assortment: there’s a wide range of items from eyeglasses to BBQ grills
• Merchandise depth: the variety of choices available within each specific product line
• Shallow assortment: the selection within a product category is limited
• Deep assortment: varying shades and in hard to find sizes

• Carry a limited number of frequently purchased items, including basic food products, newspapers, and sundries
• Cater to consumers willing to pay a premium for the ease of buying staple items
• Meet the needs of those who are pressed for time, buy items in smaller quantities and shop at irregular hours

• are food stores that carry a wide selection of edible and non-edible products
• large supermarkets are a USA fixture

• Have narrow and deep inventories
• Offer a good selection of brands within the lines they do sell
• Tailor their assortment to the specific needs of a targeted consumer, often offer a high level of knowledge

• --General merchandise discount stores: offer a broad assortment of items at low prices and with minimal service and are the dominant outlets for many products
• --Appeal to price conscious shoppers who want easy access to a lot of merchandise
• --Off price retailers: stores obtain surplus merchandise from manufacturers and offer brand name, fashion oriented goods at low prices.

discount retailers that charge a modest membership fee to consumers who buy a broad assortment of food and nonfood items in bulk and in a warehouse environment

• discount retailer, owned by a manufacture, that sells off defective merchandise and excess inventory
• Designed to provide an additional distribution channel for the manufacturer

• Sells a broad range of items and offer a deep selection organized into different sections of the store
• Department stores are searching for different strategies compete
• Try to go upscale by introducing amenities such as valet parking
• Others compete more directly with discount stores when they provide shopping carts

• Combine the characteristics of warehouse stores and supermarkets
• Huge establishments several times larger than other sores
• US find them too time consuming

• Method a firm uses to complete an exchange with a product end user that does not require a customer visit to a store
• Amazon. Com

• Occurs when a salesperson presents a product to one individual or a small group, takes orders, and delivers the merchandise
• Personal care products such as cosmetics, jewelry, and skin care products
• Door to Door Sales
• Parties and Networks

Party plan systems: a sales technique that relies heavily on people getting caught up in the “group spirit” buying things they would not normally buy if they were alone

• a system in which a master distributor recruits people to become distributors, sells the company’s product to the recruits, and receives a commission on al the merchandise sold by the people recruited
• Allows firms to reach consumers who belong to tightly knit groups that are not so easy to reach
• Pyramid schemes: an illegal sales technique that promises consumers or investors large profits from recruiting others to join the program rather than from any real investment or sale of goods to the public (no effort in marketing)

• Appealing because they require minimal space and personnel to maintain and operate
• Best suited to the sales of inexpensive merchandise and food and beverages

• Is how the target market perceives the store – its market position relative to the competition
• Create a distinctive and appealing personality
• All elements work together to create a clear, coherent picture that meets consumers’ expectations of what that particular shopping experience should be
• Atmospherics: the use of color, lighting, scents, furnishing, sounds, and other elements to create a desired setting “feeling” for the retail environment

• Store layout: arrangement of merchandise in the store and determines traffic flow
• Traffic flow: the direction in which shoppers will move through the store an which areas they will pass or avoid
• Move shoppers systematically down each aisle
• Staple goods in more remote areas and try to place impulse goods in spots shoppers will pass on their way to look for something
• Department and specialty – use free flow layout because its more conductive to browsing

Clutter conveys a store with lower-priced merchandise

The music playing in a store has become so central to its personality that many retailers even sell the sound tracks specially designed for them

set the mood

• Should complement a store’s image
• Retailers work hard to maintain service quality, rapid turnover of sales people makes this a difficult goal to achieve
• Sore motivates its employees by paying the substantially more than the average rate and deducting sales commissions if customers return the merchandise

form an image of a store in their mind based on price points or price ranges

• is the traditional downtown business area you’ll find in a town or city
• Drawn to the area to shop or work, and public transportation is usually available

group of commercial establishments owned and managed as a single property

located themselves in a separate building

innovative retailers find new ways to reach consumers (carts or kiosks)

• Factors such as
• Long-term population patterns
• Location of competitors
• Demographic makeup of an area
• Convenient to customers in the store’s trade area, the geographic zone that accounts for the majority of its sales and customers
• Population characteristics such as:
• Age profile
• Community life cycle
• Mobility
• Consider the degree of competition they will encounter if they locate in one place versus another
• Saturated trade area vs. understored trade area