Information Management And The Retail Industry

Internet fashion retail is a highly competitive market, the trends in the industry and company’s success relies on customer’s needs, which change constantly. “Competitive advantage is the delivering of superior value to customers and, in doing so, earning an above average return for the company and its stakeholders” (McGee, Thomas & Wilson, 2005, p.207). In order for ASOS to stay on top of its competitors, the trends in the industry have to be monitored, so that further they can be strategically translated in developing new products, to gain customer satisfaction.

Target Corporation allocated large budget to upgrade information system as part of a roadmap to transform business (Target Roadmap, 2015). Once the upgrade is completed, it will provide a large amount of intelligent data for internal resources to support customers faster. It further tracks performance and controls accurately the timely information about daily operations in real time. The automated online and on-demand ad-hoc reports generate reports for each store any time as well retains records of products and services.

For this growing population, we can track the merchandises and find out what kind of items the customers spend money on. We gather the data and analyze the pattern and what style the customer is looking for. We send e-mails to the customers when getting new items that fit the customer’s dress preference with style suggestions.

Developing effective retail management is utilizing the space in the store in order to display items that provide the largest contribution to overall profit. Retailers attempt to draw maximum attention to their most profitable products

Consumers are always satisfied with good customer service. When it comes to retail store customer service and satisfaction it is important because department stores are large in size and finding help can be difficult. Colloquy, a company concerned with building customer value, released a survey and asked 3,000 consumers across five geographical areas to rate their personal experiences with retailers. Macy’s was ranked number one in the department store category, with the most loyal customers. To keep up with technology advances Macy’s has invested time and money into developing a more efficient online shopping site, Macys.com and Macysweddingchannel. This investment cost nearly $300 million in 2006-2008 is being used to scale-up these fast-growing businesses through improvements in delivery efficiency, online site functionality and customer service. To enhance the shopping experience at Macy’s 100 stores in 2007 experienced remodeling and began introducing the most advanced POS registers and systems to the sales floors nationwide. Macy’s passion is product and people. There continuing pursuit is to have unique fashionable merchandise ready for customer satisfaction. Macy’s promise is to always carry the best brands and the most-wanted items. They also believe in hiring the right employees. With the right employees, there will be a sense of motivation and helpfulness. The American Customer Satisfaction Index covers 200 companies’ products and

Currys PC World offers efficient feature to the customers and business management, as the feature of information density helps organisation to attain the quality information regarding their existing customers and prospects. In the similar context, it supported organisation in reducing the cost associated with the collection, processing and storage of information about customers. At the same time, timeliness as well as accuracy of transacting information from customers to management has greatly enhanced the opportunities for organisation to penetrate in the global retail market (Salunke, Weerawardena, & McColl-Kennedy, 2011).

Tesco is one of the leading supermarkets in United Kingdom as well as is a second largest retailer in the world right after Walmart. Tesco is considered as a multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer headquarter. As Tesco had been grown and developed and the retailing market has changed over the past 78 years, Tesco has bring in variety of technology systems to help the company in performing task at different level management which rom the operational level to the executive level. This is the structure that the system allowed the business to run smoothly and to ensure that zero mistake decisions are made and the reports are composed for effective management. Therefore, there are two of the information technologies or information

The ability to manage information plays a critical role in developing a firm’s capabilities in customer relationship management, process management and performance management (Mithas, 2011).

A popular goal for many businesses, especially in the fashion industry, is to provide quality products to customers. Especially within the world of fashion, keeping customers loyal and happy is important for any business, because customers mean sales and sales mean profit. Therefore, this is why providing quality products is one major goal of Ralph Lauren’s mission statement. Ralph Lauren understands how having quality products that satisfy customers impacts the loyalty of customers as well as the growth and continuation of the business. When customers are not happy, they do not buy. Also, when customers do not buy, they generally go to competitors. Furthermore, when customers are not happy, they often tell others of their displeasure. Word-of-mouth

Walmart is a billion dollar retailing machine. Through the decades, Walmart has combined many different types of information systems in to their day to day operations. Walmart is known around the world for their continuous improvements and implementation of new information systems to remain on top of the retail industry. The information systems used by Walmart play a major role in their continued success. With their use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Walmart is able to send and receive instantaneous data to their networks. This is why Walmart has been able to remain competitively priced and control their inventories. This paper will show how Walmart has used many different information systems during the course of its history to manage both capital and human resources.

The organisation I chose for this assignment is called J Sainsbury plc. J Sainsbury plc is one of the world's leading retailers, playing a part in the lives of 15 million customers a week. John James and Mary established Sainsbury Supermarkets in 1869. Sainsbury's Supermarkets employs over 138,000 people. Of these 70 per cent are part time and 30 per cent are full time. 58 percent of colleagues are women. A large Sainsbury's Supermarket offers over 23,000 products - 40% of these are Sainsbury's own brand. Sainsbury's serve nearly 10 million customers at 432 stores throughout the UK each week. Of these stores, 17 are in Scotland, nine in Wales and seven in Northern Ireland. Nearly 60 percent of

Talbot’s stores had a welcoming residential feel and their sales associates received extensive training in both customer and merchandise content. The associates were required to greet the customers within a minute of entering and ask specific questions to satisfy the customer needs. Talbot’s catalog operations were fully integrated with its store operations and items could be returned to the store to save customers time and cost of shipping. Their automated inventory search program allowed them to locate an item instantly that was out of stock. Using “Red Line” telephone located in every U.S stores Talbot connected with their customers instantly. Those who used this service were offered reduced shipping and handling charge. Talbot also made sure their assortments were fresh and aligned with lifestyle and fashion trends. Their merchandise process was driven by a merchandising team that consisted of a New York based product development office, the buying and production planning staff, manufacturing staff, technical and design staff. Talbot’s 13 week planning cycle involved five major decision points. This process was followed four times a year. The styles for all merchandise were developed on previous year sales history and current fashion trends for each of the company’s two main seasons. Talbot merchandise development

An additional method Zara utilizes to ensure the right product is produced is to constantly monitoring the sells at every store in real time through the use of computers. Sells managers are the individuals that play out this strategy. When the clothing sells well or does not sell well, they can quickly let the designers know to swiftly create new designs (“Case 3-4. Continued Growth for Zara and Inditex”, 2013). However, the competition is changing their strategies in an attempt to successfully compete with Zara. The methods that Zara has implemented to ensure fast fashion is truly fast has pressured the competition into reducing their lead times on stocking their stores (Hayes & Jones, 2006).

The fashion apparel industry is considered to be one of the most globalised industries across the world with a turnover of multibillion dollars every year and hence plays an important role in the global growth of the industry (Jackson and Shaw, 2006). The fashion business typically comprises of various aspects like compressed product life cycle, highly erratic demand and changing buying trends of the consumer (Christopher et al., 2004). The growing demands of fashion conscious consumer and the need for fast reaction to the emerging trends has transformed the conventional fashion buying cycle wherein planning the range initiates one year prior to the selling period. Predominantly driven by fixed calendar schedules of trade shows, events and exhibitions planned for two seasons in a year: spring summer and autumn winter, the traditional fashion cycle has been changed now to fast fashion buying cycle (Barnes and Greenwood, 2006; Bruce and Daly, 2006). In recent years fast fashion has revolutionized the retail industry. Few years back it was considered as a niche segment offered by mainly two key players like Zara and H&M but the fast fashion concept has now flourished rapidly and is being adapted by many brands, private labels and e-retailers. Fast fashion retailers have outplaced the traditional designer driven push approach with pull model where retailers react to the trends within just few weeks against the traditional fashion industry norm of six months (Sull and Turconi,

The fashion industry is one of the most complicated industries in the world. It is the largest employer of all the creative industries and directly employs 816,000 people across a wide range of jobs and professions from fashion designers to fashion retailers. In the UK economy, it is estimated that the fashion industry contributes a direct value worth 21 billion pounds (Casciato, 2010). The world of fashion is filled with competitors, who are struggling for public awareness. ZARA and UNIQLO are two companies operating in this market and spare no effort to survive and prosper in this industry. This report will start by providing an industry analysis, and then it will discuss ZARA’s strategy, strategic issues and its strategic options. Finally, it will analyze the critical success factors of UNIQLO, the reason why it failed to compete with ZARA and its strategic options.