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Posts Tagged ‘Retail’

Resourceful retailers are finding creative ways to reinvent themselves and transform their business into something that entices and keeps customers. The more creative a retailer is, the more that business is going to last. Even in an economic down-turn, 50% of consumers will often pay more for a better customer experience.

While filming Smart Retail™, I saw some pretty clever retailing and it brought to mind all the opportunities that are out there for independent specialty retailers in this threatening economy. What it all boiled down to was unique customer experience and exceptional customer service.

Times have indeed shifted and retailers had to cut back to basics. Interesting that basics included customer service, isn’t it? This means that, in many cases, retailers had once dropped out the fundamental action of servicing their customers in better, more competitive ways.

The days when retailers could just sit back and watch customers come in because of location or brands or nice merchandise are over. Now retailers need to get on the ball and drive customers in with offers or gimmicks and keep them coming back because of something exceptional.

That something exceptional falls into customer service.

I once came across “the Japanese way” of customer service, which is giving customer-service representatives time for long conversations with targeted customers and tuning into the customer needs.  Read more...

Indian unorganized retail sector & its challenge

India is the only one country having the highest shop density in the world, with 11 outlets per 1000 people (12 million retail shops for about 209 million households). Rather we can see the democratic scenario in Indian Retail (because of low level of centralization, low capital input and due to a good number of self organized retail).

India started its Retail Journey since ancient time.

In Ancient India there was a concept of weekly HAAT, where all the buyers & sellers gather in a big market for bartering. It takes a pretty long times to & step to shape the modern retail.  In between these two concepts (i.e. between ancient retail concept & the modern one there exist modern kirana/ mom and pop shops or Baniya ki Dukan.

Still it is predominating in India

So the Indian retail industry is divided into two sectors- organized and unorganized.

Organized retail sector refers to the sectors undertaken by licensed retailers, that is, those who are registered for sales tax, income tax, etc. These include the corporate retail formats of the exclusive brand outlets, hypermarkets, supermarkets, departmental stores and shopping malls.

 Unorganized retailing, on the other hand, refers to the traditional formats of low-cost retailing, for example, hand cart and pavement vendors, & mobile vendors,  the local kirana shops, owner manned general stores, paan/beedi  shops, convenience stores, hardware shop at the corner of your street selling everything from bathroom fittings to paints and small construction tools; or the slightly more organized medical store and a host of other small retail businesses in apparel, electronics, food etc.  Read more...

Corporate entities in india   today face three major challenges and Opportunities:

    Globalization,

   Advances in technology and

    Deregulation.

 RETAILING  

Retailing includes all the activities involved in selling goods or services directly to final consumers for personal and non business use. A retailer or retail store is any business enterprise, whose sales volume comes primarily from retailing,

 TYPES OF RETAILERS

Retail Organizations exhibit great variety and new forms keep emerging.  Some major types of retailers are specialty store, department store, Supermarket, Convenience store, Discount Store, Off Price retailer etc., Some of the major stores considered for the study are described below:

 Department Store:

Several Product lines, with each line operated as a separate department managed by specialist buyers or merchandisers.

 Supermarket:

Relatively large, low – cost, low – margin, high volume, self – service operation designed to serve total needs for food, laundry and household maintenance products.

 Convenience Stores:

Relatively small store located near residential area, open long hours, seven days a week and carrying limited line of high turnover convenience products at slightly higher prices. Many have added takeout sandwiches, coffee and pasties.

 Discount Store:

Standard merchandise sold at lower prices with lower margins and higher volumes. True discount stores regularly sell merchandise at lower prices and offer mostly national brands. Discount retailing has moved into specialty merchandise stores, such as discount sporting – goods stores, electronics stores and books stores.  Read more...

Key attribute that is making Online Shopping the most preferred means of shopping is its hassle free features. Sit at one place with a laptop, desktop or palmtop and even your web enabled mobile in a comfortable surrounding of your choice and start searching and shopping; an activity far from the madding crowd in the markets where you end up having an exhausting day. Online shopping saves our time, money and energy. Do we want more? With the swarming online stores on the Internet, consumers have ample choices to make. Just sitting at one place consumers can hop from shop to shop and market to market and travel places anytime! Without loosing a single penny, shedding a single drop of sweat and spending all the day travelling to market and back we get to see the international stores and international product just in a fraction of a second. Amazing experience it is!

Knowing the growing demand of consumers and merchant in the market, everyday a new and trendy online storefront takes birth. And RetailMart.com is amongst those few most trendy, designed to convenience storefront that emerged recently in the market.

RetailMart.com with its simple features is perfectly designed with most simple ecommerce tools to meet the expectation of both Consumers and Merchants in a most effective manner. Merchants can join the portal, open their own storefront or post products to sell and Consumers have full choices to search, compare, and buy at their will and in their way!  Read more...

DEFINITIONS

Retail margin is basically the difference between your book’s
wholesale price and your book’s retail price. For example, a
book with a cover price of $10 and a wholesale price of $5 has a
50% retail margin.

Wholesale price is the cost of your book to a retailer. To use
the same rudimentary example, a book with a cover price of $10
and a retail margin of 50% will be sold to a retailer for $5.

Retail price is the same as cover price or selling price. This
is the cost of the book to the end consumer (the reader). The
retail price is typically printed on the cover of the book and
also “embedded” within the barcode on the back. For example, a
book with a wholesale price of $5 and a retail margin of 50%
will have a retail price of $10.

As you can see, retail margin, wholesale price, and retail price
are interconnected. By having two figures, the third can be
calculated.

The fourth definition to be aware of is the trade discount,
which is the percentage off the retail price that a wholesaler
or distributor pays for your book. Since the retail margin is a
portion of the trade discount, the trade discount always exceeds
the retail margin. Distributors typically expect between 50% -
70% in order to provide an acceptable margin to the retailer.

MAKING DISTRIBUTION WORK FOR YOU  Read more...