What is the day to day activity that generates inside a retail store apart from selling? Many assume inside a retail store you only need to sell merchandise to a customer who enters your store. Is there anything more into it? If yes what is it? Sometimes I feel it’s suspense to a lame man and I need to open this Pandora’s Box to them. There are many things that a person needs to know and understand about retail store operations. If you’ll open the box you will find inside it various activities like selling, customer service, warehousing, systems, sop’s, security, merchandising, layouts, stock take, cashiering, stock planning, placing fixtures, human resources functioning, report generation, schemes, events, housekeeping, target planning, end of season sale, buying, negotiating, servicing, managing people, the list is endless. Imagine so many activities under one roof. This it-self makes operation more interesting. Let’s take every aspect one by one to understand each activity more clearly.

One needs to first and foremost understand the format of the store, whether it’s a lifestyle format or a value format. In a lifestyle format to ensure quality service the ambience within the store is very pleasant, all the merchandise is well placed, and quality of merchandise is maintained, availability is not in abundance, the visuals are very specific to the concept of merchandise, the sales associates are provided with the skills required to assist customers, infrastructure within the store is beautiful. To maintain these service standards the price of merchandise available here is high. Discounts are not available at such stores often, except during an end of season sale or clearance sale. All departmental stores are lifestyle formats. Compared to this a value format store is similar to a supermarket where the ambience is similar to a market. Here the availability of merchandise is in abundant and at all times they are either put on discounts or some offer or scheme is available. Hence service provided is compromised. The infrastructure is very simple and not similar to the one within a lifestyle format. Personal customer assistance is not ensured, merchandise displayed will not be very expensive and of high range quality. Basically value formats target volume business and for the mass.Once the concept of store format is clear one needs to clearly understand the departments, products and their hierarchy within a store. Understanding product hierarchy (product mix) is very essential as it helps one to display the products in the right manner and easier to assist a customer buy a product. It also helps one to plan the layout of the store very systematically.Many organisations have large number of brands and products which is referred to as Product Line. They offer shirts, trousers, t-shirts and other products in different styles, sizes and colours. Therefore, it can be concluded that they have a wide product line with different product lines (shirts, trousers, t-shirts). Product line depth indicates how many product variants are there under each brand/ product line.
Next week we will understand the store layouts.