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A good merchandising strategy supports retail companies in enhancing traffic, sales, and brand loyalty. However, it is vital for retailers to know which technology would be suitable for providing exceptional and personalized shopping experiences and merchandising.
FREMONT, CA: Retail merchandising is basically a process that provides support to the retailers in selling their products. Each retail store has its own line of merchandise to offer its clients. The way the merchandise is displayed plays an important role in prompting the customers to purchase the product and generate revenue for the retail company.
Merchandising assists in the logical presentation of the items to tempt the customers and make them brand-loyal.
The responsibilities of a retail merchandiser include managing visual merchandising, pricing, product advertising and promotion, planogram design and maintenance, on-site demonstrations, signage, product stocking, free samples, inventory management, inventory audits and verification, and count integrity.
There are several technologies available to assist merchandisers in performing their responsibilities effectively. The tools help retailers in increasing merchandising performance and productivity in three ways:
1. Improving logistics while reducing price
Since the merchandisers divide the retail stores by region, a single merchandiser is responsible for the store. Compliance issues might occur as the merchandiser, based on the route, might take a longer time to visit a store again. The technology can help in handling the compliance issues by identifying them in real-time and dispatching a field rep for specific stores, thereby saving significant resources and streamlining logistics at a lower cost.
2. Strengthening the relationships across the supply chain
Merchandising is a three-party alliance. Retail brands trust the third party merchandisers for accurately implementing the marketing initiatives as well as play a role in building long-lasting brand impressions. Technologies assist the merchandisers in creating a comprehensive view of every store and area to ensure compliance with standards of different brands, retail shelf health, and improved relationships across the supply chain.
3. Estimating the impact of particular events
It is important that every brand measures the impact of the launch of a new product. Brands also make use of sales data to find out what strategy worked out well and what did not. However, the technology helps the retailers in having supreme in-store visibility at a regional, local, or national level. By providing appropriate technologies to third party merchandisers, the brands will be able to detect nuances in how their products are demonstrated and perceived in particular markets. It enables them to act with precision in order to enhance the sales of the retail companies and their brick-and-mortar partners.
These technologies help retailers increase the efficiency of merchandising and other in-store responsibilities. The retailers can use technologies like mobile apps connected to beacons or shopper tracking technology, mobile crowdsourcing for high availability, low cost data collection by smartphone users.
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