Retailing management

1. How do you compare retailing to retailers?

- Retailers typically don't manufacture their own items. They purchase
goods from a manufacturer or a wholesaler and sell these goods to
consumers in small quantities. Retailing is the distribution process of
a retailer obtaining goods or services and selling them to customers
for use.
2. What are the basic requirements for successful store management?
- Multi-tasking. Good managers must be able to oversee all the
employees, keeping their abilities and weaknesses in mind while
prioritizing multiple projects. 
- Decision-making. An effective manager has the ability to evaluate and
decide which are crucial to the success of your store. Retail often
means actions must be acted upon quickly, but making the right
decision rapidly without mistakes means evaluating information to
weed through what is important and what isn't.
- Leadership. The best managers know how to get the most out of their
team by using their people management skills, listening skills, and
problem solving skills to encourage their associates and sustain
employee engagement.
- Motivation. This goes hand-in-hand with leadership. To be effective as
a team leader, being able to motivate employees is a must. Even
though I'm a motivational speaker, motivation to do well is internal. 
- Organizational skills. A manager must be able to look for areas in
which the rules or procedures of the company can be improved. 
- Effective communication. Only a small percentage of communication is
the spoken word. Body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice
all combine with words to convey a message.
3. Give the importance of merchandize budgeting and its benefits to
the consumer or public.
- Consistently having the right quantities of the right product in the
right place at the right price and at the right time is a cornerstone of
effective retail merchandising. This means that all the activities
involved in purchasing and moving retail goods from inventory to
 customers are components in a retail merchandise plan. Just as with
every other aspect of a retail operation, merchandising operates
within a budget.
4. Define the following
a. Open to buy
- In the simplest terms, open-to-buy (OTB) is a financial budget for
merchandise buyers. By understanding inventory needs from a
financial perspective, including revenue and margin, retailers gain
insight into their open-to-buy process and ensure the organization will
not overspend merchandising budgets.
b. Mark down
- A markdown is a devaluation of a product based upon its inability to
be sold at the original planned selling price.
c. Scrambled merchandising
- Scrambled merchandising refers to a retail tactic in which a retailer
broadens their assortment to include items that are generally outside
their focus or are usually sold in a different retail format.

Situation Analysis

What unique qualities of the business are considered and have an appealing
to the customers?
- Standing out from the crowd can give you an edge over your
competition. Below are seven examples of different traits to make your
company different from your competitors. A unique selling
proposition (USP) is a well-thought-out statement that helps a company
distinguish itself from other businesses in its category. In most
instances, companies will focus on a single feature or benefit that solves
a problem, satisfies a need, or takes away their customers' pain as their
USP. In order to articulate it to their customer base in a memorable
way, companies will create taglines or summaries of their USP and
insert them into their advertising messages. 

- Convenience: Easy in, easy out. Customers love how easy it is to buy your
product or use your service. 
- Reliability/Dependability: Your product or service never fails. 
- Quality: Your product is luxurious. Your service is top notch. When
customers describe your company, they speak in superlatives.
- Creativity: Your product or service inspires people to think outside the
box. Apple told customers to “think different” with pictures of brilliant
minds such as Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso.