Retail Marketing
At the heart of retail marketing is the effort to develop a merchandise and service that will serve a specific need of the customer and at a price that will be affordable by them while making profit. Understanding the purchasing power and buying preferences of the customer is vital. This along with understanding the customer behaviors will enable retail to target their marketing strategy and spending in a channel that will yield maximum profit.
Retail Marketing Mix
Retail marketing mix describes the elements and methods needed to form and execute a retail marketing strategy. Retail marketing mix varies considerably on the type of product and services offered and the market targeting them.
Marketing Strategy
This is actually a process that enables a business to maximize its utilization of limited resources to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage over its competitors. The strategy is usually centered on customer satisfaction as its main goal of achievement.
Retail Marketing Managers Today Must:
1. Understand the spending trend of the customers, their desire to buy a product over the other and use this knowledge to their advantage.
2. Improve market response by targeting the right group of customers at the right time using the right media of advertisement and transmitting the message.
3. Use consumer data to understand the customer behaviors and use the knowledge to formulate a strategy or decision about a product, marketing strategy and location.
4. Retail marketing managers need to understand the projects, customers, market and location of the store and achieve a strong ROI for their retail business marketing processes.
Customer and Market Potential Estimates:
Estimate the spending power of your customer to determine his current, potential and life-time value.
- Estimate the market potential for an effective purchasing initiative
- Estimate the quality and quality of your market opportunities.
Customer and Market Profiles:
- Understand who your customers are and their behaviors. Develop an effective communication strategy based on your understanding.
- Understand your market targets and identify their potentials
The Ever Changing Retail Environment:
The retail market is changing very rapidly and will continue to do so. Retail landscape is moving towards discount retailing from specialty stores and department stores. Although it is difficult to predict the future trends more recent ones can be understood based on demographics, geographic convenience, time, expenditure on food and changes in information technology. There is also a tendency of convergence of electronic methods as well as traditional methods of retailing.
Foundations of Retailing:
- Solve any customer problems the moment you get to know about it.
- Respect all your customers no matter what their purchasing capability or spending behavior is.
- Connect with customer emotions.
- Sell your products at a fair price (not the lowest)
- Save customer's time then they come to your store.
E-tailing:
This is simply retailing on the internet. The www has dramatically changed people’s life as well as many businesses. Customers’ behavior to research about a product they want is also encouraging retailers to open store online. Studies show that stores that have more than one medium of existence, e.g. an online store along with the real world one, make a higher sale than others.