Retail Marketing

Retail marketing includes activities and processes of selling to ultimate consumers for their personal, family and household use. Retailers are middlemen who procure goods from the wholesalers and sell the product to the end-users or consumers. They cater to the customers' demand by providing various products from different companies in one place. They also offer 'pre' and 'after-sales services' and communicate to customers about the features of the products.

Types of Retail Stores:

Specialty Store: They have a narrow product line and deep assortment.

Department Store: They have several product lines, each operating as a separate department managed by specialist buyers or merchandisers.

Supermarket: They are a relatively large, low cost, low margin, high volume, and self-service operation designed to serve total needs for food, laundry and household products.

Convenience Store: They are relatively small stores located near residential areas, open for long hours, seven days a week, carrying a limited time of high turnover convenience products at a slightly higher price.

Discount Store: They sell standard merchandise at lower margins and higher volumes.

Off-price Retailers: The merchandise is brought at less than regular wholesale prices and sold at less than retail.

Superstore: They are about 35,000 square feet in area, which meets consumers' total needs for routinely purchased goods.

Combination store: They are a combination of food and drug stores.

Hypermarkets: they combine supermarket, discounts and warehouse retailing.

Catalog Showrooms: It consists of a broad section of high mark-up. Fast-moving, brand-name goods at discount prices.