Page 10 - DMGT553_RETAIL_STORE_MANAGEMENT

Unit 1: Introduction: An Overview of Retail Operations

Location: Where to physically locate a retail store may help or hinder store traffic. Notes
Well placed stores with high visibility and easy access, while possibly commanding
higher land usage fees, may hold significantly more value than lower cost sites that
yield less traffic. Understanding the trade-off between costs and benefits of locations
is an important retail decision.
Keeping Pace with Technology: Technology has invaded all areas of retailing
including customer knowledge (e.g., customer relationship management software),
product movement (e.g., use of RFID tags for tracking), point-of-purchase (e.g.,
scanners, kiosks, self-serve checkout), web technologies (e.g., online shopping carts,
purchase recommendations) and many more.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. In the world of trade today, retail would include not only goods but also
……………………………
2. A retailer or retail store is any business enterprise whose …………………comes primarily
from retailing.
3. Retailers play a significant role as a ………………..between manufacturers, wholesalers,
suppliers and consumers.
4. Manufacturers usually make one or a variety of products and would like to sell their
entire inventory to a few buyers to………………...

5. Retailers also offer the service of …………………….for the manufacturers.
6. Retailers also act as ………………………and information between the wholesalers or
suppliers and the consumers.

7. Retailers create ……………………………for the products by displaying the goods to the
consumers.

1.2 Stores Organization

An organization is a formal arrangement of roles and ranks put in place to attain some particular
objectives. The arrangement of a retail organization depicts the role of employees and the mode
in which the organization operates. To outline an effective retail organization structure,
managers/owners must describe store objectives, recognize the tasks, categorize the tasks and
jobs, and allocate responsibilities and power to different positions, and define the link between
them. Organizations can have flat arrangements or vertical (tall) arrangements. A flat
organization arrangement has only one or two levels of management, whereas a vertical
organization has more than two levels of management. This unit will discuss forms of retail
organization and number of organization levels.

1.2.1 Organization Structures

Most store and catalogue/web operations are likely to have different merchandising and
inventory planning organization structures. Some of the aspects that need to be considered
while integrating stores and direct channel organization structures are:

Need to maintain single or multiple merchandising and inventory management
organizations for different sales channels to determine merchandising direction.

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