Wage Comparison Exercise

Wage Comparison Exercise

1. The jobs I chose are: Regional Merchandising Manager, Visual Merchandiser (my job), and Department Retail Sales Manager (ranked from top to bottom according to the pay rates). The result was a little bit surprising because I thought that the Sales Manager position will be better paid than the Visual Merchandiser position. In my opinion and from my personal experience, I felt that the manager position has more responsibilities than the merchandiser position. The manager needs to have managerial skills as well as customer service skills. It also requires more team leading and multi-tasking experience since the position is the leader of the entire store. Besides, it says in the merchandiser position that this person will need to report to a manager. Thus I thought the Department Retail Sales Manager would get a higher pay rate. However the visual merchandising position is more expertise orientated. So maybe that made the pay difference.

2. The bonuses only occupy a small portion of the total cash compensation for all three positions. They have slight difference. The Visual Merchandiser has 1.3% bonuses, the Regional Merchandising Manager has 2.2%, and the Department Retail Sales Manager has 2.0%. I think for the two manager position, the bonuses are closely related to sales and profits. Part of their responsibilities is to adjust performance plans according to the store(s) sales. For the Visual Merchandiser, the bonuses mostly come from individual performance. Although the merchandiser is able to make display/stock plans to boost sales, it still doesn’t have as much power as the manager positions for manipulating profits.

3. I think the job descriptions are a little bit too precise, especially for the Department Retail Sales Manager position. From the description it looks like that this position doesn’t require too much experience or expertise. It is also confusing to see the sentence “Familiar with standard concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field.” It seems a little too broad. For me this job description looks more like a supervisor than a manager, which requires less responsibility and work load. In comparison, the Regional Merchandising Manager description is much clearer. It pointed out more specifically that the position requires education, experience, managerial and team leading skills. The description of the Visual Merchandiser position is well organized too. I can see what the basic responsibilities and requirements are. And I can also get a hint of how much managerial power I will have in this position.

In the visual merchandising team there is a position called Accessory Specialist. I couldn’t find matches for it. I think it was because this position only exists in fashion retail industry, and it is a very specific title. I think the website probably put it under Visual Merchandising positions and combined