General Merchandising Implementation

General Merchandising Implementation

First, I need to determine that a supervisor responsible for marketing and merchandising activities has a great deal of responsibility to carry because he is responsible for the sales area of the business.

To be able to operate a sufficient space (or any other space for sales), the Manager should be aware of:

The industry in which the store or company is taking part
The business plan
The Strengths, the weaknesses threads, opportunities, threads of the business (SWOT)
Standardization for branding and the objectives
The changes and developments occurring on the market
The competition
Sales budget, sales objectives, and/or sales budget
Marketing budget
The habits of the client:
When can they buy it?
Which are their preferred places to purchase?
What drives them to spend more?
After that, let’s start the merchandise Implementation. These are the steps to be done:

I. The Products Mix.

This is the first step that must be taken, as you could have a great selling space that is well-organized and categorize, but in the absence of the appropriate merchandise, you will not be able to sell.

To ensure that you have the correct Products Mix, you need to be aware of every information that I’ve mentioned earlier, and in particular, you should be aware of your clients and customers. It is essential to research your customers and monitor their actions. It is important to determine the length and depth of the product categories are in your shop and the amount you need to keep in stock for each of the storage units (SKU).

The ability to keep track of this information is crucial since if you sell lots of things, you sell less of what you’re selling (to make it appear in black or white), then you could encounter issues with your clients or lose them, and you may result in a decrease in the overall performance of your company.

How can that be? Consider this:

Imagine you own a t-shirt A that sells six units per day.

You own a shirt that sells ten units each day.

Shirt A provides you with a 30% profit margin.

The shirt B will give you a 15 % profit margin.

They’re both identical products with different brands.

What product should you offer for sale? more of? ?…Product A!

You must therefore take care so that you don’t lose customers purchasing “shirt B” by having it in your inventory. However, perhaps you can offer “shirt A” more exposure to increase the sales of it and less of the other. So, you’re likely to require more “shirt A” to keep your profits at a high level.

Another important aspect of the mix of merchandise includes the price strategy. Pricing strategy is an aspect of the overall picture of the company and can be an indication of costs as well as the investment return that the owners are expecting at the close of the year.

II. The Store Distribution or Setting.

This refers to the place that the various display shelves, fixtures, shelves, and gondolas, as well as other elements, will be placed within the space of the store. The setting of the store is crucial as it will guide your customers around the store, and it should be done in an efficient and logical way. Customers should be comfortable and should be able to feel they’re not trying to search for what they want. Additionally, this is an effective tool to create impulsive sales placing displays, islands of products, and other off-the-shelf displays. The design of the store is about making sure you get the maximum profits from every foot of the retail store. The merchandiser Tool is a kind of store ghost salesperson, presenting the merchandise, offering suggestions, and communicating with your customer. Also, it contributes to your brand image, which can be seen from the time you walk into the store. A lot of customers are telling “I won’t come to this store anymore. I feel I can’t find what I am looking for!” that is because of a bad store distribution/setting.

If you are planning to set up the distribution or setting of your store, you need to answer these questions:

Where should the entry point and exit locations be? In order to facilitate both steps.
How many areas will the shop be divided into? Based on the type of store and the business goals.
What should order, and how do these sections be placed? In order to make it easier for customers to move around the store.
What size should the section be? Based on the needs of customers and market segmentation.
What number of check-out lanes should the store be equipped with? The answer will depend on the area of sales space as well as the number of customers the store will handle.
What is the best way to have furniture where?
What should the lighting look like?
What are the hot and zones of cold? In order to create balance in them.
How can you increase visibility?
What should the sound system’s purpose and what kind of music and sound should be played?
What temperature should the store’s inside?
What and where should the signs be placed?
How long are the corridors?
What do you think of the parking space? Is it big enough?
And so on.
The store’s distribution/setting must always be considered a case study in order to meet the demands of customers and to increase the ROI of investments.

III. Shelving.

If you have shelves, you’ll make use of the ideas of the store’s layout, however, placed in a smaller area in the shop, which is the Gondolas. If they are done right, the gondolas can:

Get the attention of customers
Sell your products
Help in the selection of items
Sell on impulse
Gondolas are the place where the final battle for market share is waged between rivals of the same category or product family. The customers will make their final purchase choice. It doesn’t take an expert in science to realize that the more room an individual brand occupies on the shelves, the more chances to sell it, and I’ll go over this in a different article.

Usually, there are three elements that are considered when determining the space or the number of faces every product (SKU) will receive in the store. At certain times, these elements are considered separately, and other times they are combined. These include:

Profit margin
The number of sales or product rotation
Market share
There are other elements taken into consideration of store owners:
Private labeling
Affidavits for commercial and trade
There are two methods to set up shelves for your products: vertically or horizontally.
The most well-known and one I personally believe is most efficient would be the display that is vertical of goods. I believe this is because you allow your product a chance to participate on every level of the gondola, and thus increasing sales.

IV. Store Animation.

This refers to the various actions the store takes to provide a better shopping experience for customers. Most of the time, this will be accomplished with the help of producers of the items involved in these initiatives. The initiative is usually given by the retailer, which will then seek the support of the manufacturer. These actions are usually related to the store’s anniversary or special promotions, seasons or holidays, and also other events. Other times, this initiative is taken up by the company who will seek to achieve some sort of differentiated approach from the competition.

There are a variety of ways to make this animation, including:

Decorate the outside and inside
Demonstrations
Showcase
Fairs
Sampling
Awards
Coupons
Shows that are not in gondolas
Special displays
Offers for promotions, such as 2×1 3×1 1-free…
Sound announcements with special sound
Materials for Point of Purchase POP, point of purchase materials
Expositions
and many more.
There’s no limit to these store-generated animations. Every day, there are new developments. At the end of the day, this will be dependent only on the imaginations of those in the process.