The Concept of Retail Merchandising 

The Concept of Retail Merchandising 

Mahima Nand
Asst. Editor Textile Merchandising
Assistant Professor, Amity University
Research Scholar in Sustainable fashion
National Institute of Fashion Technology
New Delhi – 110 016, India
Email: mahima.nand@nift.ac.in

Retail Merchandising:

Retail merchandising refers to all promotional and marketing activities that in some way contribute to selling products to customers in a physical retail store. The definition here is limited to the physical, but it can be applied to a variety of merchandising venues—from traditional brick-and-mortar malls to annual pop-up events. However, with the continued rise of digital merchandising, the term retail merchandising is increasingly being used to describe digital merchandising as well. This trend is likely to continue, especially because research suggests that 2017 will be the first year in history that digital retail sales will surpass in-store retail sales.

The requirement of Retail Merchandising:

• Merchandising is a process involving developing, securing and managing the merchandise mix to meet the firm’s marketing objectives. The merchandise ­mix stands for the retailer’s total offering, be it goods or services or both. The merchandising process is a three-tier structural set of activities.
• The following configuration gives the idea of the merchandising process.
  

  The requirement of Retail Merchandising

The first stage or tier is to do with developing the merchandise-mix which is composed of two elements namely product and service-mix. The second stage or tier is securing the merchandise-mix which involves two highly skillful and specialized activities namely the buying process and the procurement process.

• Here, the retailer determines “from where”, “when” and “how” to get products into the stores. The third and the final stage or tier in the merchandising process is managing the merchandising-mix which is to do with planning and controlling the merchandise to ensure efficient, profitable operations.

Factors of Retail Merchandising:

The Factors which will affect by the merchandise strategy are as follows-

1. Size of the Retail Operation
2. Separation of Duties
3. Shopping Channel

Factors of Retail Merchandising

1. Size of the Retail Operation:
   How big is the retailer in question? Is it a small operation with a single E-Commerce website, or is it a major retail conglom create with store worldwide and websites in every language? As one would expect, these two dram apically different businesses would have vastly different retail merchandising approaches.
2. Separation of Duties:

Separation of duties is common in mid-size and large retail operations. Often, buying, planning, and selling may be separate tasks and responsibilities for a variety of reasons, from security to specialization.

3. Shopping Channel:

Another key consideration of merchandising is the shopping channel. Nowadays, consumers have a number of options when it comes to how they want to shop – online, through television, in-store, via mail catalogs, etc.

Noor Ahmed Raaz

Founder & Editor of Textile Merchandising. He is an Assistant Professor and Chairman of the Textile Engineering Department of a Reputed University in Bangladesh. He has performed numerous Research Regarding Textile Engineering. He has also received two times “Research & Development Fellowship” from the Ministry of Science & Technology in Bangladesh. For any further queries, please contact email at raju.uttara105@gmail.com or WhatsApp at +8801673758271.