Retail Marketing Strategy

Retail Marketing Strategy

We started with the Black Friday Concept of marketing that is practiced by U.S. retailers, wherein the mega sales starts at mid-night immediately after the Thanks Giving Thursday. It is the start of profit making season for all the retailers and this profitable phase goes till the January next year.

Retailing can be defined as the last stage of business activity of selling goods and services to final consumers.

Retail is a US$ 500bn industry in India with a growth rate of 10% where organized sector is growing at a rate of 20%. It employs around 40million people, i.e. second to agriculture industry and contributes 25% of our GDP.

A new concept of retailing as emerged out by default, i.e. Back-door retailing. Under this concept the big retail joints like Walmart, Tesco, etc. who are entitled to sell only to wholesale buyers are selling single unit products to end customers also through some smart tactics.

Total Product Concept by Philip Kotler plays a key role in developing the retail business of an brand. Example: Apple Inc., Steve Jobs realized that the reasons of customers’ preference of Windows over Macintosh were less product knowledge and lack of interaction of the end customers with the products. So he came up with the idea of basement showroom with a cubical glass store on the ground with the aim to attract the customers, make them feel the technology that Apple provides, get used to Mac and know the products through demos and trained techno salespersons. He didn’t focus on selling the Apple products through these stores and today Apple is one of the most profitable company if their revenue generation is calculated on the basis of revenue per square feet.

Types of Retailing

1. Forward Integrated Retailing: This includes Distributors who are also into retailing, big manufacturers who have their Specialty Stores like Raymond’s, Apple. Their aim is to control cash flow & margins and to come closer to customers.
2. Backward Integrated Retailing: The small retailers they come together to form a consortium of small or medium distributors, they do this to compete the forward integration retailing. China has this culture independent people coming together and manufacturing as well as distributing the goods like bags, electronic gadgets, etc.

Evolution of Modern Retail

                                                                                         Retail Chain[pic 1]

                                                                                      Big Box

Mom&Pop Stores          Super Market          Speciality Stores           Mall Format[pic 2][pic 3][pic 4]

                                                                                   [pic 5][pic 6]

                                                Catalog                       Power Retailer