Developing Strategies in Retail Marketing - Essay Example

? and Section # of INRODUCTION Every businessman formulates strategies for running his business successfully whether it is marketing strategies or some other. Strategy is rightly defined by Sun Tzu “Strategy is the art or science of knowing how to identify and employ available means to an end, despite the obstacles they oppose and / or known antagonisms”. This definition suits the retailers business as they don’t have many resources to waste. They have fewer resources and they have to use all of them more efficiently. Retailers are generally small traders who sell their products in a small quantity. Retailers usually do not deal in larger quantities. They take small supplies from the suppliers and then sell them in an open market. They need to keep their eyes on every aspect of the market. In fact they are the real salesmen of the products. The normal buyer goes to the retailers for shopping. A normal buyer does not have access to the manufacturers or the suppliers. Simply, a retail shop is the last place in the chain of selling the products that is from the producer to the consumer. Before analyzing the marketing strategies to be adopted by retailers we need to understand what the retailers and public relationship actually are and what their functions are. This will make us capable enough to make some strategies for the retailers to achieve good PR coverage. RETAILERS Business dictionary defines retailers as “A business or person that sales goods to the consumers, as opposed to a wholesaler or supplier who normally sell their goods to another business”. A place where a retailer commences business is known as retail store or departmental store. A departmental store is defined as "The department store is characterized by a store with wide variety and deep assortment and good level of customer service. An example is the shopping center to attract consumers who value comfort, safety, quality, famous brands and greater variety of options in specialty stores. The variety stores are those that offer a wide variety of products and limited services and low prices. They sell similar products that could be found in department stores, but usually are not brands, or brands of self-standard of quality and service system is self service” (Kotler, 2000, p. 129) There are certain characteristics of retailers that make them different from producers and whole sellers. They are like they deal in different varieties of the products where as producers produce the products of their brand only. Retailers have a very limited and small percentage of total consumers and they try to satisfy consumers by providing different types of the products and acting as a bridge between the producers and the consumers. Retailers establish and maintain a permanent contact with the consumers and they purchase as well as sell small quantities of the many products. Retailers perform different functions for different stake holders. They may include functions for the consumers, suppliers, and manufacturers. The main general functions include sale of goods and establishing a good relationship with the consumers. A retailer acts as a middle man between producers and the consumers. Moreover he acts as an advisor to both the supplier and the buyer. He also acts as a marketing agent for different companies as he attracts consumers by briefing them about different products. The functions that are specifically performed for the customers are provision of a good stock of different finished products and maintaining enough stock of the goods to fulfill desirable demand of the normal consumers. A retailer does not bind himself to sale the products of some specific producer he even sales products of two competitors. Hence he offers a variety of products to the consumers. Nowadays most of the retailers also offer free home delivery service and very few of them charge for such a service. In case of any fault or dissatisfaction from the products purchased, a retailer offers after sales service according to the producer’s policy. He acts as an advisor of the customers and helps them selecting the best product. The functions that are specifically performed for wholesalers and producers include; a retailer acts as an agent of the wholesalers. He displays different products to sale them and earns good revenue for the wholesalers as well as for the producers. He helps the wholesalers and the producers in reaching the final products to the ultimate user that is the normal consumer. He maintains direct relation with the consumers and gets a continuous feedback from them he then informs the producers about the customer’s feedback and thus helps them planning the better production strategies. PUBLIC RELATIONS American heritage dictionary describes public relations as “The art or science of establishing and promoting a favorable relationship with the public. It actually is a method available to different organizations and personalities as well to increase their reputation and good will. In various organizations there is a public relations department which performs such task. There is great competition among different business organization which is curtailed through public relation. A company tries to establish its favorable image among the masses through PR. Through PR an organization gives better understanding of its products and services to the consumers. After analyzing above we are in a good position to describe what retailers should do to increase their sales. What strategies they should adopt to achieve a good PR coverage. It is generally believed that one cannot sale even gold without advertisement. Therefore it is very important to advertise your product and let the consumers know all those which a retailer has to offer for sale. PUBLIC RELATION TOOLS Many authors have described various tools for achieving good PR coverage. The traditional tools are press releases, newsletters sent to customers and advertisements at public places. Moreover trade exhibitions, blogs at social websites are some newly invented tools for PR coverage. It is generally believed that more the PR tools are used by an organization more would be its sale and vice versa. This can be shown by the following diagram of relative frequency index. Source: http://www.sfu.ca We can see from above graph that relative importance index of a company is going up with every source of marketing used by it. Moreover we can see clearly from the above graph that most of the strategies are through advertisement weather it is advertisement through mail, TV or news paper. Now we shall discuss some of the PR methods available to retailers. Whenever a retailer makes a correspondence with someone always use a letter head tagged with business name, address, contact number and such details. When printing some advertisement literature always include some comments and testimonials of the existing customers and some well known personalities. Send your all press releases to your customers and make it reachable to as many people as possible. Send gifts with your logo like t-shirts, pens and tea-mugs to the customers and many important personalities Advertise your business on those places which are easily reachable by general public. Sponsor charity functions and activities like provision of medicines in hospitals with the logo of your business. Donate your products to such places as well. A retailer’s business card should contain the important brand names which he offers for sale. Also he must keep those business cards with himself. The printing quality of cards should be fine. Feel free to give those cards to everyone. Also leave them on some table or similar place from where people can get it. Trade unions and organizations also possess a great importance .A retailer must join those unions and organization which are related to his industry. Publish a weekly brochure of the products you offer for sale. Circulate it with the local news paper. The brochure should be of attractive colors and must mention in it the market price of the products and discount offered by you. There is always a day on which there is less number of shoppers in the market.try to offer more discounts on such days or make it a sale-day. A consumer is always attracted when given a welcome with open arms. Trend your staff for it. Newsletters, online discussion forums and such blogs have become a very important tool for marketing nowadays days, a retailer should subscribe with all of them. Customer is always satisfied with more discounts. Offer as much discount as possible, but let customers know it. There are always certain products which don’t have a good market. Offer them as complimentary with most selling products as special packages. A customer is more happy with your service if after sales service is good. Try to contact the customer after the sales. Say them thank you and get their regular feedback. This creates a relationship of the trust. This is an era of electronic marketing. Send continuous e-mails to your customers and inform them about latest sales promotions. Choose a well known personality who shops in your shop take their photos and spotlight them as customer of the month. Publish several copies of it and circulate .hang a copy of it on the main entrance of your shop. Your business area should be well decorated and business place should be well known and easily reachable by all. Adopt a policy of “customer is always right”. Do not interrupt customers when they say something. Always adopt a courteous approach for the customers. Young men and children are the potential buyers of your market. It is generally seen that even older parents buy those products which are liked by their children. Therefore target those young buyers. Go to schools for their counseling, provide them some toys, books and edibles with your logo, and invite them to come to your shop for shopping sometime. Colors chosen for your advertisement should be eye catching and not irritating. Always use some bright colors and an impressive writing format. Internet is a useful tool of marketing these days. Develop a website of your business which should contain all the details and services offered by your business. The website address should be as easy as possible. Try to promote yourself as an expert of the product you offer for sales. Inform all the customers about ins and outs of the product. For example a retailer sales cosmetic products, he should suggest the consumers which product to use according to his skin needs. Local journals, magazines and newspapers are very important tools of marketing. They also include metro newspapers .a retailer must advertise his business in such publications. Researches reveal that a consumer is attracted by such publications. Though it’s very costly to advertise your product on TV or radio yet there are large retailers who can afford. If it comes under affordability do not hesitate to go for it. By this a large number of consumers are get informed about your business. Different exhibitions are also a potential place for targeting a good number of consumers. A retailer must go to such exhibitions and if possible get a stall there. Chamber of commerce is a place where all the business men meet regularly and discuss the challenges and opportunities. A successful retailer must be an active member of such forums. Offer discount cards and vouchers to existing customers. Maintain a complete data of your customers. Send them gifts on special occasion like birthday cards, etc Get regular feedback from your customers. Organize some functions like in schools, hospitals, factories on special days. Like on Labor Day go to factories and give speeches on the rights of labor. Sales staff should be polite and honest in their dealings. Give them regular trainings on how to deal with the consumers. Celebrities are the persons who attract the general buyers. Make some popular celebrity as your brand ambassador. Organize regular seminars on your business. A retailer should give speeches on such occasion.try to act like an expert during that speech. Give answers to the queries of the audience and invite them to your shop for further assistance. Your employees are your asset. Take very good care of them, ask them about their personal problems and try to sort out those problems, if possible. An annual award distribution ceremony should be organized on a particular date and that ceremony should be hold on that fixed and link that date with your business. For example xyz & co organizes an annual ceremony on 22nd December.name 22nd December as xyz & co. day. Invite all the area officials, celebrities and press for such an event. Most of the people use mobile phones these days. Advertisement by sending has also become very successful. A retailer should send promotional messages to customers. A retailer should try to win consumer’s loyalty by giving him the right information. A retailer should never misguide his customer by providing the wrong information. It is not necessary that a retailer should adopt all of the above methods for PR coverage. He may select those methods which suit his business and falls under his affordability. Before applying any of the strategies, a retailer should consider all the country laws because in different countries several marketing tactics are banned .Furthermore a retailer should reach the customer by customer’s desirable mode. For example if a customer wants to be contacted through e-mail, send him e-mails likewise if another customer irritates from your calls do not give him call at any time. Simply, understand the consumer’s likes and dislikes. Moreover retailer should be better aware of the market trends and practices and also about the factors influencing the trends. Retailers should realize their goals and mission and hence formulate and adopt the policies that better suit their mission. It is generally believed that a retailer should use such tools which are easily accessible to a larger proportion of the consumers like in UK 80% of people read a regional paper compared to 61% who read a national. Therefore it would be more beneficial for a retailer to use a regional newspaper as a tool of public relation. This can be seen by the following graph. Moreover there are always two sides of one picture so as of PR. there are certain advantages as well as disadvantages of PR. advantages include; It is considered as an authentic source of marketing and collecting accurate information of the market. By PR one small success story of a single product will reach to the larger number of the consumers. Cost of marketing through PR is comparatively lower than that of the promotional activities. The source of PR is considered more authentic by the public as compared to advertisement and other sales promotions. Disadvantages of PR include; Public relations use many channels like TV, radio, newspaper and others at the same time. This leads to the wastage of resources. Moreover it is not confirmed that weather the message has been sent to the targeted customers. Since the promotional campaigns are pre-planned and determined as well therefore the final message reached to the customers are as per the plans where as it is not the case in public relation. There is always a chance that the PR will be dumped in the other important issues like national and international issues. PUBLIC RELATION COVERAGE IN RECENT NEWSPAPERS The companies use different PR strategies to attract customers to their product range. The Olympics 2012 to be held in London is the most awaited event in the whole world; therefore, companies are trying to associate their names with this event for better PR in the future. The Olympic countdown clock on the Telegraph UK which is being sponsored by Omega is an admirable PR tool. This coverage is expected to attract a variety of people from the entire world to the Omega products due to its close association with the Olympic Games. Similarly, Coca-cola is well known for its association with the games. Telegraph in its May 3rd 2012 edition states “The most visible aspect of Coca-Cola’s sponsorship (to Games) so far has been its advertising.” This has lead to a wide PR campaign around the world leading to attraction of millions of customers each day. Likewise, VistaPrint in the Telegraph uses a discount offer to attract the customer to its services. At the same time, it uses an admirable combination to colors for better PR coverage. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bemays. Edward L. The Later Years: Public Relations Insights, 1956-1986. Rhinebeck, NY: H&M Publishers, 1986. Bianco, David, ed. PR News Casebook: 1,000 Public Relations Case Studies. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. Dale Miller, 2010. Retail Marketing: A Branding and Innovation Approach. Tilde University Press. David Gilbert,2nd edition,Retail marketing management.Prentice Hall. David Walters, 1991. Retail Marketing: Theory and Practice. Prentice Hall College Div. J. Blyth man, 1996. Retail Marketing (Retailing S.) Routledge. 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