Retail Merchandising

Retail Merchandising

Retail merchandising is a management system of strategic planning and

tactical control, directed toward the financial enhancement of an

inventory and the profitable distribution of that inventory to the

retail consumer. Merchandising enables retailers to make the best use

of space and layout. It creates part of the communication process with

consumers and focuses on layout, design, traffic flow and display

advantage points. It links in with the overall development of a

company’s corporate image and strategies, and fits with the

organisation’s objectives to enhance and promote image. The primary

goal of retail merchandising is to influence the potential customers

to purchase a particular merchandise product at a particular retail

store. The techniques are used to focus customers’ minds on what is

available and enable the customers to move freely from one area to

another and to make the purchasing decisions easier. Visual

merchandising techniques are logical, practical and can be taught to

all of a store's employees. But first the retailer must instill in

employees a sense of ownership of the merchandise.

Body shop was founded by Anita Roddick in 1976, started from one small

shop in Brighton. Today, the Body Shop boasts over 1,900 stores in 50

countries, crossing 12 time zones and selling over 1,000 hair and

skincare products. The body shop plc is famous for creating a niche

market sector hi quality nature inspired skin and hair care products.

It is estimated that The Body Shop sells a product every 0.4 seconds

with over 77 million customer transactions through stores worldwide,

with customers sampling the cur...

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...nother key to understand merchandising

is to realise that a store is not two-dimensional. It should be

treated as is a piece of three-dimensional sculpture. Vertical

merchandising is more effective than horizontal merchandising because

the focus of horizontal images fades out to the sides. By contrast,

the eyes can take in an entire vertical image with one glance. Another

powerful visual merchandising technique is the law of interrupted

patterns. In any situation where there is a disruption of a prevailing

pattern, the eyes move immediately to the break in that pattern.

Another behavior pattern that retailers can capitalise on through

proper merchandising is the tendency that most people have to

automatically turn to the right. Putting fixtures at a 45 degrees

angle to the main traffic pattern ensures total visibility.