We believe very strongly in a marketing led approach to retail. It is inseparable from our goal of helping retail clients achieve profitable sales growth!
The retailer is a merchant and trader who sees the achievement of sales as a top priority. The high prevalence of multi-site retail operations in all countries has often led to a dominant position being taken by the central buying and merchandising departments within retail organisations.
Where this evolution has occurred, the b & m department has driven the trading side of the business. Sometimes, the effect has been to loose corporate direction as each buying team develops its own separate direction in the pursuit of sales.
The problem when this has happened has been a lack of clarity about direction. This can be a tragic shame if retail strategy is well defined.
The answer is to adopt a retail marketing approach that commits marketing activities between the retail strategy formulation and the work of the merchant traders of buying and merchandising. Very importantly, there is no overlap and there are tremendous gains to be achieved.
The 4 aspects of retail marketing are retail marketing strategy, market research, competition and retail marketing plan. They empower the organisation to 1) know its customers; and 2) understand what they want.
The beauty of this approach is that it builds a powerful framework for the whole business to truly focus on the needs of customers.
Many retailers are highly professional at marketing and one can see the obvious benefits that come from being passionate about satisfying customers.