Raw material consumes maximum amount of the investment in a company. And highest amount of cost reduction can be done in this area only. Hence stores play a major role as far a company is concerned. And if this raw materials are not stored efficiently they will get deteriorate and thereby causing big loss to the company. Hence in order to study stores in detail we thought of taking stores management as our topic.

Slideshow: Store Management: An Overview

A successful retail organisation comprehends its market, its customers and the implication of strategic locality in a more systematic manner, so that the competition in the retail industry can be easily tackled. Such organisations need the most important micromarketing tools to examine where to put new stores, set up customer profiles, and establish finest marketing practices in order to attract new customers.

Slideshow: Managing Customer

Human resource management is very important in retailing because employees play a major role in performing critical business functions. Retailers rely on people to perform the basic retailing activities such as buying, displaying merchandise, and providing service to the customer. This chapter will deal with the major areas of managing human resource like recruitment, selecting, training, supervising, evaluation and compensating sales associates.

Slideshow: Managing Manpower Module

As a retailer, one of your important assets is ‘space’. On the other hand, in numerous situations the quantity of space you have is a limited resource. It needs to be well managed. The homelands that have enjoyed the utmost trade and communal development have been those with a well-built retail sector. Why has retailing turn out to be such a well-liked method of conducting business? The credit goes to merchandise, which is an easier access to a multiplicity of products, liberty of choice and elevated levels of customer service.

Slideshow: Managing Merchandise

In this module, we will see the various aspects of storage planning and store buildings to ensure smooth stores operations.

Slideshow: Introduction to Stores: Warehouse

A retail concept should be far more than mere whimsical aesthetic considerations. It also needs to be innovative and cost effective, flexible and oriented towards the target market. More importantly it also needs to differentiate itself from the competition so that customers would prefer shopping there rather than elsewhere. The concept should not just be a look but a complete experience. To this end, signage and graphic communications and visual merchandising are key elements for consideration. Goods and services need to be presented in a way as to increase the average consumer transaction.

Slideshow: Managing Space

Perhaps the only most damaging blunder in industry at the moment is the frequent practice of overlooking asset management concepts during the design, formulating and start-up of foremost innovative facilities. The global cost of this poor management practice with relevance to assets pertains to retail is beyond doubt. New facilities familiarity unnecessary unplanned downtime, resulting in extreme costs and loss of critical production due to quality and quantity issues is also one of the agenda.

Slideshow: Managing Capital Assets

A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is a set of written instructions that document a routine or repetitive activity followed by an organisation. The development and use of SOPs are an integral part of a successful quality system as it provides staff with the information to perform a job properly, and facilitates consistently in the quality and integrity of the end-result. SOPs take into consideration the regularly recurring work processes that are to be conducted or followed within an organisation. It not merely elaborate but also document the way activities are to be performed to facilitate consistent conformance to technical and quality system requirements and to support operation.

Slideshow: Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and Transaction Matrix Module

Visual merchandising refers to the use and manipulation of attractive sales displays and retail floor plans to engage customers and boost sales activity. In visual merchandising, the products being sold are typically displayed in such a way as to attract consumers from the intended market by drawing attention to the product’s best features and benefits.

Slideshow: Visual Merchandising Plans

We will be illustrating numerous visual merchandising guidelines based on 12 different topics, with practical examples and implementation possibilities. Observing these guidelines will lead to an increase in sales and reduce personnel costs on a long-term basis, in addition to many other positive effects.

Slideshow: Visual Merchandising: Guidelines for Practical Implementation

Suppose you go to the market to buy soap. The shopkeeper suggests that if you buy two soap cakes, an extra soap cake will be given to you free of cost under “buy 2 get 3” scheme. You feel attracted to buy as by doing so you are saving money on one soap. Moreover, soap is an item which is required on a regular basis, and so you can keep the extra two cakes to be used later. This is an approach of increasing sale of a product and it is quite different from what you have learnt in the earlier two lessons. Let us learn more about it in this lesson.

Slideshow: Sales Promotion

The sales promotion strategy is an important element in overall marketing strategy. Sales promotion strategy involves identification of objectives, effective communication for attracting attention, allocation of budget, determining the correct promotional mix, introduction of strategic approach and finally evaluation. We shall study about each one of them briefly here.

Slideshow: Store Manager’s Strategies on Sales Promotion

Delivering a service to customers involves answering the questions "where?" "When" and "how" Service marketing strategy must address place and time, paying at least as much attention to speed, scheduling, and the potential for electronic access in cyberspace issues as to the more traditional notion of physical location. The nature of the delivery system has a powerful impact on the customer's experience with the service product.

Slideshow: Service Delivery and Consumption

Price is generally seen as the amount of money that is charged for a product or service. It can serve as an incentive to buy a product or discourage a customer from purchasing it. Price is an important measure because it can be seen in specific and uniform terms, however price is only one measure of value. Other measures of value are more difficult to define because they are subjective.

Slideshow: Pricing Policy

The chapter will provide understanding towards the nature and scope of marketing research and the scientific process involved. It will also discuss the role of research in designing and implementing successful marketing programmes. It will explain the role of marketing research in marketing information systems and decision support systems and provide the conceptual framework of marketing research process. This chapter will also explain the process of defining a problem in marketing research and its importance. It will focus on describing the tasks involved in defining a marketing research problem and also explain in detail the nature and content of various components of a defining a correct problem.

Slideshow: Marketing Research

We tend to have a picture in our minds of what being a salesperson involves — not all of it positive. Plus, some of us may think we would not make good sales people because we can’t see ourselves cold-calling, prospecting, or being good at closing the sale. But in this chapter, we’ll be looking at sales from a different point of view. How would you feel about becoming someone who helps people solve problems by offering them solutions that meet their needs? At its essence, this is what sales truly means.

Slideshow: Selling skills

Going through a buying process and that too so involved like an extended problem solving (EPS) situation, is never easy for a consumer. The purchase and post-purchase are the last two stages of such consumer decision-making. While the purchase stage is more crucial from the manufacturers' or marketers' perspective, the post-purchase behaviour indicates the ultimate satisfaction perceived by consumers, and has implications for marketers as a determinant of future purchase decisions.

Slideshow: Post Purchase behaviour

In this lesson we shall discuss the first two functions i.e., planning and organising emphasising the nature, importance and process of planning, and the basic concepts of organising including process of organising, the organisation structure, delegation and decentralisation of authority

Slideshow: Planning and Organizing

In this lecture we will discuss the significance of management in achieving organizational objectives efficiently and effectively. Managers do this by carrying out the functions of planning, organizing, staffing, leading, motivating, communicating and controlling. Managing is an essential activity at all levels although the managerial skills and roles vary at different organizational levels. This lecture begins with some background knowledge to the discipline of management, and the main purpose is to understand the meaning, process, skills and functions of management.

Slideshow: Management Skills

Retail stores may encounter customers who ask a sales associate or other in-person store employee for some legal agreement information while shopping, such as what the store’s return policy is, or what the payment terms are when paying with a store credit card versus cash. In these situations, it’s easiest when you can refer these inquiring customers to your store’s website where these policies can be hosted and accessed from.

Slideshow: Store Policies, Vendor Management and Book Keeping

Retail organizations are in a flurry to consolidate their existing operations, step into new markets, adopt new channels, and find innovative ways to enhance customer experience levels. Hyper-local retailing or “store of the neighbourhood” is one definitive trend for brick-and-mortar retail. The natural outcomes of this phenomenon are store specific assortments, promotions and planograms. Amidst these developments, the inventory management function – ensuring that the right product is at the right location and when the customer wants it - is assuming greater importance

Slideshow: Retail Inventory Management

To be competent, you must be able to comply with your organization’s current health, safety and security policies and procedures. You should report any identified breaches in health, safety, and security policies and procedures to the designated person. You should identify and correct any hazards that you can deal with safely, competently and within the limits of your authority.

Slideshow: Health, Safety and Welfare at Work