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Even if your prices are low, shoppers will assume that they can get the same things cheaper in the supermarkets. While some local shops market hard that they are cheaper than Tesco, for most this is probably a waste of effort. Shoppers simply are not visiting you for low prices. The basic logic is that the best discounts go to the biggest stores because they have the market power to extract the lowest prices. However, this logic ignores the fact that small, local suppliers can often undercut the prices of big national suppliers. The big stores will probably not use the local suppliers because they want a consistent offer in all their stores; and this creates an opportunity for local shops to sell local products, which can be marketed as cheaper than what is available in Tesco, if you like. Another thing to consider is that shoppers generally do not understand every day low pricing (EDLP) as pioneered by Wal-Mart and its UK operation, Asda. EDLP is copied from manufacturing business

There's an unlimited supply and there is no reason why, the Sex Pistols used to sing of the 1970s music industry. What drove sales was fashion and people's need to be first to have the new song and the new hair style. For local shops that want to sell magazines, however, the lyrics could be changed to there's a limited supply. The maths behind this are simply explained in a recent Neville Rhodes's column in Retail Newsagent. There are only 42 magazines in the UK that average a sale of more than three copies per outlet - out of a universe of 3,500 magazines available. As 52 per cent of the sales are achieved in 15 per cent of the outlets (mainly supermarkets and WH Smith) and independents with 60 per cent of the outlets achieve 27 per cent of the sales, this shows that most magazines are more likely not to be sold in most outlets. The short shelf life of most magazine titles - either weekly or monthly - and the promiscuity of magazine shoppers who will buy their favo

Visualising what success looks like is a key way to keep yourself focussed on what you want to achieve. It is the first point that Richard Hammond makes in his book Smart Retail and for the owner manager it is a vital one. Mr Hammond writes about Bob Caton, who taught him the techniques of visioning. Mr Caton told him about the house he built for himself in Thailand. "He bought the patch of land as soon as he could afford to and then every night, at home in England, imagined himself sitting on the vehranda at a house that didn't exist. He would describe to himself how it would feel, the taste of the cold beer in his mouth, the warmth of the breeze on his arms... "The next morning, he would repeat the process and no matter what lay in the day ahead he would get two things achieved - he would feel better about things that he was not all that keen on having to do and he got his house built." The success of your business depends on your ability to motivate your tea

Retailers need to introduce new products to provide their shoppers with "good news" and to generate interest. But for each new product that you introduce you need to consider delisting an existing line. Easy, you might think. I will just print out the list of products in the category and take off the one with the lowest sales. However, if you do this research from the US suggest you might be wrong. What you need to consider is what sort of demand you have for each product, a white paper by Demand Tec, a US specialist software provider shows. It says that there are two kinds of sales: incremental sales, when products add to the total shopper spend and are not readily substituted by another item transferable sales, where shoppers find an alternative easily when it is not available. Using its software, it shows a category with 50 products from top seller to bottom seller. At the same time it also measures the incremental sales each product provides. The number 50 in ove

While local shops should market themselves as being good for their local communities, they also need to think about how to make a profit. Consider the following two propositions. Where is the real money made in supermarkets? In the middle of the store, where processed foods and well-known brands reign supreme, says Fortune magazine in its profile of US firm JM Smucker. "Our strategy is to own and market No. 1 brands, sold in the centre of the store, in North America," says co-chief executive Richard Smucker. Where do you go to buy real food? The peripheries says Michael Pollan in his Food Rules - and "stay out of the middle." "Processed foods dominate the centre aisles of the store, while the cases of mostly fresh food line the walls," he writes. If we assume that supermarkets are designed to generate profits from all parts of the store, how do these rules translate into how you have organised your shop? If your layout is designed so that people