Nordstrom's Success

Question No.1

Identify the type of retailer that Nordstrom's is classified as. Describe the characteristics it shares with other retailers of this type.

Nordstrom is a successful retail store, which offers a large variety of commodities and purchase goods. The main purchase items include clothing's, cosmetics, electronics, and house wares. There are purchases points created within the department rather than one check out point for the customers. The department is considered as a separate purchasing point, the idea behind independent purchase point is to provide a better control and service to the customer. This also benefits in providing better picture of department wise feedback of the customer.

Characteristics of Shared With Other Retailers

There are other luxury retailers which include Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Paul Stuart, Bloomingdale's, Brooks Brothers, and Barney's. These luxury stores cater the request similar to Nordstrom from a variety of products. They have the comparable channel of distribution for e.g. catalog, in store, online sales facility. Regardless of the similarities, Nordstrom builds its reputation bases in high level of services and excellent customer response.

Question No.2

Describe Nordstrom's level of service on the continuum from full service to self-service. Give an example of a store that would be on the opposite end of the continuum and explain their differences.

The salesman's of the Nordstrom's are taught to judge a situation by positioning themselves in the shoes of a customer. They strive to make a customer's experience easier during shopping and they are trained to take pride in it, there are several examples from the history Nordstrom salesmanship that are inspiration for the current employee. The retail store works on providing full services in a variety, because they can go to the last end to facilitate their customers. The functions of Nordstrom's retail store does not only facilitate the customer is shopping, the store provide a customer with variety of benefits, they have an open 30 days policy pertaining to return of goods, bank and credit services. The excellence of customer services makes an experience personal and enjoyable.

An Example of a Store on the Opposite End of the Continuum

The Banana Republic factory outlet store would be a chief example of a store that is on the opposite end of service level continuum. The functions performed by the store are on self service basis; in comparison to the Nordstrom factory outlet store the service level is nonexistent in the Banana Republic factory outlet. Another example of a poor quality customer service is Target; a retailer as massive as Target is not completely dependent on high touch point of the customer services. To make a change to satisfy the customers is to keep the products on a shelf and the

Question No.3

Analyze the six components of Nordstrom's retailing mix to determine which have been the most important to the company's success. Provide a detailed rationale.

A retail mix includes a mix of variable which includes merchandise, location, price, communication, services, personnel and physical attributes which are the core components of the retail marketing ...