Patricia Norman Interview

* Sales reps secure the best product placement in stores, conducting taste tests in stores and convincing “individual store managers to pull the product from the central buyer.” (Singer, 2008)

Corporations booming affected the Americans in different ways. The industrialized cities begin to attract more people. Urban transportations were improving and this led to the making of department stores. Document I talks about a novel where a woman talks about the department stores in a city. How department stores were the most effective retail organisation. how

Malcolm Gladwell’s piece, “The Science of Shopping”, causes his audience to fear retail anthropologists such as Paco Underhill. On the surface, Gladwell appears to write a short documentary of sorts about the manipulation of businesses and stores. Venturing deeper into the story provides the reader with vision of the importance businesses place on their layouts and strategies. Gladwell continues to assure his point that consumers are not mindlessly obeying what retailors want them to do. Store owners are required to accommodate to how their customers behave, and what their target market wants. Gladwell refers to significant moments with Underhill by directly quoting Paco. He also vividly describes different aspects of Paco’s practice.

A famous writer for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has written an article, “The Science of Shopping”, which is based on Paco Underhill’s study of retail anthropology. The intention of a retail store is obvious- that is to attract customers and convince them to perchance as much as they can. There is so much knowledge that we can study, such that how the environment affects people’s thinking. These are tiny details that we don’t usually think about. The reason of how Paco Underhill success is because he notices these details. Details determine success or failure. Paco Undnerhill—a talent and passion environmental psychologist, provides us a new point of view of the science of displaying products,

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

Malcolm Gladwell is currently a non-fiction writer for The New Yorker. After college, he took a journalism position in Indiana and later took a position in Washington. In 1996, he moved to New York, where he is today. He has written five books and each has been on the New York Times best seller list (Famous Authors). In his first year of working as a journalist for The New Yorker, he wrote, “The Science of Shopping.” In this piece, Gladwell objectively evaluates Paco Underhill’s research within the business industry. Underhill “would have from a hundred to five hundred pages and pages of carefully annotated tracking sheets and anywhere from a hundred to five hundred hours of films” for each experiment that he conducts (99). With Underhill’s determination and research, and Gladwell’s journalistic qualities, this report changes the way anyone views shopping.

The industry we have chosen is the department store-retail industry. Within this industry, we have chosen the department stores of JCPenney and Macy’s. We find this industry, as well as these two companies, interesting from a strategic perspective. JCPenney has recently undergone a massive strategic restructuring in regards to its pricing, brand offerings, and store layout, pushing it away from the typical department store strategy of discounts and coupons. Its new strategy has become much closer to Wal-Mart’s strategy of every day low prices. Macy’s, on the other hand, has restructured with a push from the economic

The retail industry is saturated with substitutes, in part to low entry barriers. Online shopping and small boutiques stocking similar lines, brand names and designs provide David Jones potential customers with many substitutes. It is the David Jones experience that cannot be substituted; shopping in a large, upmarket department store. For the sector, substitutes are low.

Department stores are not easy to manage, and take a whole team of individuals to run daily operations smoothly. Dillard’s success at the turn of the century came from balancing finances properly, incorporating a friendly atmosphere, and building its reputation as a welcoming upscale department store. In recent years, however, Dillard’s Inc. has surfaced in headlines for being listed as one of the worst companies in the nation to work for. With stiff competition and acquisition factors, the department store industry is not one to lag behind in and

With the constant changes and developments in the workforce, people need to enhance their career roles. The University of Phoenix uses that fact to persuade people to enroll in classes. They use ads and phrases that make you reevaluate your current situation.

I’m Antionette Bailey and working to get my Bachelors in Human Resource Management. I've had the pleasure to plan an awesome event for the marketing department but that's about the closest it get far as my experience and knowledge with marketing.

The intensity of rivalry and the threat of substitutes are strong components for J.C. Penney to consider as they continue to strive for increased revenue and market share. Their two primary competitors are Macy’s and Kohl’s, both of whom have fiercely competitive strategies to be strong retail operations. For instance, while Macy’s offers a multitude of promotional deals and is working hard to choose products based upon demographics and geographic segmentation, Kohl’s is attempting to reduce their inventory levels and improve their marketing strategies in order to become a stronger competitor in the department store segment of the retail industry. In order to compete with their competitors, J.C. Penney aims to focus on their previously successful promotions and home department segmentations by bringing in new reputable designers in order to attract a larger customer base. Due to the fact that the intensity of rivalry and threat of substitutes are both moderately strong in the retail department store industry, J.C. Penney ought to be diligent in their implementation of strategies in order to achieve success in the retail business.

Threat: Forces shaping the Nordstrom’s strategy is that it is operating in highly competitive environment, where apparel sold by it is not only competing with large organized departmental chains but, also from small independent boutiques in the U.S. As a result competition has become very stiff in retail

In this context, Booker’s chief executive Charles Wilson said that the independent shopkeepers whom he worked with are enthusiastic:” They think this will help them provide a better offer to their customers.”

Specifically, Macy’s plans on implementing a low-cost strategy through the creation of Backstage and Last Act to compete with the low prices offered by stores like T.J. Maxx and Ross. This low-cost strategy, in addition to a differentiation strategy, puts Macy’s in a situation what Michael Porter of Harvard University calls “stuck in the middle,” which he advises against. Porter argues that it is difficult to maintain low costs with the added costs from differentiation, so he counsels on making a definite choice. To Macy’s point, Gennette admits that they are operating in the middle and this a “good place to be” because the goal is to make small changes “hoping for [a] rebirth by a thousand measures” (Bloomberg