CHALLENGES FOR RETAILERS - RETAIL MARKETING

Challenges for Retailers - Retail Marketing

Challenges for Retailers - Retail Marketing

The retail industry faces challenges similar to those in other industries. What's different is that they combine together to put a great deal of pressure on retailers in today's modern economy. With a fast-paced society and faster-paced technological changes, customers want new, different, and customized goods now, and they're not willing to wait.

At the same time, pressures on the backend are mounting, too. Larger retailers, with their efficiencies of scale and international scope, are pushing prices down and slashing margins.

Decentralized operations

Staff turnover

Shrinkage

Lack of information

Future uncertainty

Complex pricing

Decentralized Operations

As a manager, ideally you'd like to be able to walk down the hall from your office and into any one of your stores or warehouses. In reality, that's not possible. You have to hire the right people, staff your other locations, and rely on them to do the job right.

Data flows from your stores and warehouses to your head office every night, so you have up-to-date sales and inventory information. You can make pricing changes across the board, or implement a new sales campaign to reflect the success or failure of one of your major products at one store - or all of them.

Staff Turnover

There's a higher rate of staff turnover in the retail industry, compared to other industries. This varies by country. European countries, for example, tend to retain store-level personnel more successfully. North America has a turnover rate of 200-300% of front-end employees in certain segments.

What does this mean for your business? While you can implement and pursue staff retention programs - and it makes good sense to do so - you're going to have new employees coming through your doors on a regular basis. Getting them trained on your systems rapidly and cost-effectively is critical so that they can become productive members of your team as soon as possible. (Joshi, 2005)

Retail Chain Manager, are easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to train others on.

Second, we train as we go. While we're developing and implementing your retail solution, we'll be training your staff at the same. As soon as your retail solution is finished, they're ready to use it - no downtime. (Joshi, 2005)

Third, we can integrate with your existing third-party systems - such as a POS system. Existing employees don't have to retrain on a new system, and since we can retain your best-of-breed components, new employees are more likely to have experience with them.

Shrinkage

Consider these sobering statistics on shrinkage (also known as inventory shrink):

For every dollar lost to shrinkage, you can lose $11 to $15 in profits. (UK statistic)

You'll only detect 3% of the shrinkage when it happens - the other 97% you'll discover later. (UK statistic) (Paul , 2007)

For every theft you detect, 46 others will go undetected. (UK statistic)

In 2005, total inventory shrinkage cost U.S. retailers $37.3-billion US.

Administrative error is responsible for 14.6% of shrinkage, and employee theft is responsible for 47.9% of shrinkage (National Retail Security Survey, ...