Retail Buying

Supply chain management plays an important role in the success of this business model, for example the limited number of items (around 4,000 per store compared to 10,000 for competitors) which are selected and decided upon how much to stock based on an analysis of each item’s ability to sell, allows Costco to have higher sales volumes for each item, thus enabling Costco to gain more bulk discounts from suppliers. This strategy enabled Costco to be the number one warehouse retailer in market share ahead of Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club (Cascio 2013).

One of the major tasks for the marketing department of a company is to build the brand with their customers. The brand name is sometimes everything to the success of a company. For example, the brand Titleist has distinguished themselves as the number one ball in golf. The slogan has been backed up by the amount of professionals and tournaments won by players mostly use Titleist brand golf balls. The reason that the marketing department will participate in supply chain decisions is to ensure the brand they are selling is the actual products that they claim to be. It would not make any sense for the marketing department to spend millions of dollars claiming the success of their products and in reality the supply chain has been cutting corners and producing products that are not what they claim to be. This will lose the brand loyalty that the marketing department has been striving to earn from their customers. In the reading it states that, “Marketers often spend gobs of money on optimizing marketing processes, building brands, and designing programs to increase customer loyalty. However, it is quite absurd to spend millions of dollars on marketing and have it all wasted as customers or animals get sick–or worse–from the products on our shelves” (Barsch, 2008). The marketing department must have knowledge of the quality of their products in order to accurately advertise their products and

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

In general, there are five key limitations to this case study of IKEA and Walmart. Firstly, this report was conducted by looking at historical information available over the internet in United States, Germany and in China, where it might not be up-to-date and the financial information shown might not truly reflect the business strategies and sales data of the firms. For example, there is no information available as to the inventory costs, earnings before interest and taxes, sales figures of each stores in each months in each country in details, or a retailer’s relationship with suppliers and local government, therefore it is relatively hard to tell if the order system, supply chain management strategies and the business plans directly affect the customer’s purchase intention and sales results (Isbery & Pittam 2013). As this case study was written from an outsider perspective, there might be bias due to

Suppliers want to have good satisfaction and feedback from their products, whilst managers will want to expand and create more stores, so they can increase their organisations income and budget.

The economic success of retailers greatly depends on their ability to reach customers and meet customer demands in ways that is convenient for the customer. No longer can retailers expect customers to only shop at their retail stores. Retailers are required to provide customers with the multiple shopping channels and flexible fulfillment options that they demand. Companies who fail to do so will see their customers take their business to competitors who are both willing and able to serve customers based on consumer demand (xxx)

Consumer today have a different expectation than a decade ago. Consequently, I believed if a Retailer want to be survive and thrive in the hostility of the today’s market, they must focus on all four of competitive priorities such as cost, quality, time, flexibility.

During this paper we will analyze how the department store industry has evolved and more important how companies are managing new strategies to remain competitive. Moreover we will use the case of JCPenney as a main focus to see how successful their strategies are. To provide a good analysis, we first need to understand how the industry has evolving and what the major companies like JCPenney are doing to continue in the industry.

Kohl’s is one of the biggest retailing department stores catering to its middle class consumers. This company sales household items, clothing, shoes, electronics and jewelry a lot of other stores sale these same items but there is a few things that Kohl’s strives in that sets them apart from the rest. The top department stores are Macy’s and Kohl’s, they sell a lot of the similar stuff however, and Macy’s consumer base is more of the upper class consumer. Although they cater to two different types of customers there are some similarities in their over all operations management. This paper serves as a competitive analysis of Kohl’s vs. Macy’s.

Suppliers in the industry seek buyers who can move a lot of merchandise in a short period of time. The threat of substitution is a big deal in this industry. Most retail stores carry the same types of products with little differentiation. This makes it difficult for companies in this industry to keep customers coming back. This places an emphasis on the need to build a good reputation with customers.

Even in staple consumer goods, today 's environment is characterized by explosion of variety. How the company manages its supply chain in such settings influence business results and customer satisfaction.

The process that should be followed and used is the eight-step category management process. The first step of this process is category definition. This case is focused on the shelf stable juice and juice drink category which consists of Cranberry Juice Cocktail, CranApple, CranGrape, and CranRasberry. The second step of this process is known as category role where we are asked to assign a category role based on a cross-category analysis. The Shelf stable juice and drink category is routine as it is in the store to help develop the retailer as a store of choice, but it is not the primary category provider. The third step is known as category assessment and with the data provided it can be seen that the shelf stable juice and drink category represents over $2 Billion in total US Sales volume annually. When diving more into the subcategories, the cranberry drinks and grapefruit categories alone represent over $750 million in sales volume for Ocean Spray. Taking a closer look, by looking at the data provided, at Stop & Shop, Cranberry makes up 47% of the category share and grapefruit makes up 22% of the share while 31% of the category is other juices and drinks. Step four is category scorecard, here I would want to work with Stop & Shop to create targets and goals that do not just positively impact Ocean Spray, but positively affect their category overall to increase store profits. One target goal I would create is that Stop & Shop should look to

DIMCO may gain many advantages by implementing supply management chain. Implementing SCM can reduce problems within the company’s internal functions, external suppliers, and external distributors. Some advantages DIMCO can gain from implementing SCM are as follows; the supply chain would improve the quality of service to the end user; reduce channel cost; and create a competitive advantage. (Reid & Sanders, 2010) The implementations of SCM will strengthen DIMCO partnership with suppliers and distributors. Supply chain management can also prevent such challenges such as the bullwhip effect, caused by erratic replenishment of orders placed on different levels in the supply chain that have no apparent link to final product demand. (Reid & Sanders, 2010) An effective and efficient SCM will allow partners to share information concerning health, safety, government regulations and environmental issues. SCM will provide a common network for communications, suggestions, and feedback. This will assist DIMCO in meeting the need of customers quickly and in an efficient manner. Overall, SCM would assist in

Retail comes from the French word retailler, which refers to "cutting off my hands, clip and divide" in terms of tailoring (1365). It first was recorded as a noun with the meaning of a "sale in small quantities" in 1433 (French). Its literal meaning for retail was to "cut off, shred, off my toes paring".[2] Like the French, the word retail in both Dutch and German (detailhandel and Einzelhandel respectively), also refers to the sale of small quantities of items.

The objectives of the research are to assess if a product placed in one position on the shelves is better than it being placed in another position and to see if it is better to place the product with any other items which can be thought to help improve the sales. Also, another objective of the research is to understand whether data analysis can be used to improve the shelf management and whether the inferences from such data analysis for a number of stores in a single supermarket can be characterized to be standard across the board or whether the output of such analysis should only be used in a particular store from which data was collected.