In thinking about how shoppers see your shop there are five areas where you control the dialogue: the prices that you charge; the quality of the products that you sell; the quality of the service you will provide; the depth of range and availability that you will provide; and the atmosphere of the shop. All are levers that an independent retailer can use to engage the loyalty of shoppers. In thinking about which are the most important for your shop, you need to think about who your key customers are; the 20% who generate 80% of the profits (note I say profits and not sales). What are they looking for and how do you match your offer to meet their interests? For example, if you have children buying trading cards, how do you make this a great buying experience for them? What other products with high margins will appeal to them? Would you put up a poster in store with a countdown to the launch of a new collection? Would you set up an in-store event so that children could swap cards with each other?
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...
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