Tag: Retail business

How to make discounting work!

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ETP Blog - How to make discounting work

The festive season is synonymous with shopping and sales. Year after year, the festive shopping season gets more demanding, basically due to two main factors – increase in the number of shoppers and rise in the competition amongst retail businesses. While more shoppers is certainly good news to the business, tough competition can be detrimental to success in the festive shopping arena.

One of the most common and probably one of the most effective techniques used by retail businesses to attract shoppers is offering festive discounts. Discount based promotions are a popular crowd puller but in the modern day retail, planning and executing discounts the right way can be a huge challenge. Retailers need to make sure that customers are finding their offers better than the others. At the same time, they also need to ensure that they are not gouging a hole in their own pockets while offering markdowns or free of charge products.

Here are some simple tips that retail businesses can use to make discounting work:

Defining objectives: This is an important step that retailers need to take while thinking about discounts. They need to clearly define the purpose of running a sale or a promotion and ensure that it is aligned with the overall business objective. The purpose could be varied, such as, looking for new customers, encouraging repeat purchases, selling off old stock and so on. Based on the purpose, retailers can decide what kind of offers they need to plan and execute, when to run the promotion campaigns offering the discounts and which products should they be offering discounts on. Further, the performance of the promotion can be tracked and measured effectively when the purpose is clear.

Segment right: Once the purpose is defined, next is to identify the target audience to whom the discounts would be offered. This includes segmenting shoppers in to different buckets so that more relevant and attractive discounts can be offered to each. Shoppers can be segmented based on their purchase history, their buying preferences, their budgets, demographics and more. Shoppers would be more eager to receive offers that are most appealing to them.

Mindful of margins: Retail business owners need to be mindful of their margins while running offers and discounts. Based on the objectives and customer segments, they need to set an acceptable margin so that they don’t end up giving away too much and running into losses.

Creatively strategize: Once retailers have their objectives defined, they know which customer segments need to be targeted and they have set their acceptable range of margin, they should then draw up strategies and define the business rules for running the promotions. While doing so, retail owners should get creative through techniques such as clever pricing, highlighting new products, offering different discounts for varied set of customers.

Execute and monitor: Next, it is time to get your promotions engine running and track its performance against set KPIs that have been predefined keeping in mind the objectives, margin, customer segments and plans. Constantly and proactively tracking and tweaking the promotion campaigns for improving performance is necessary to reap maximum benefits from discounts.

Offering discounts is a tested and proven technique for retailers to make the most of the shopping season, but it is important that it is done right.

How to manage customers that are difficult

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ETP Blog - Handling difficult customers
With the holiday season less than a month away, shoppers are already planning their purchases in terms of products, budget and time. As soon as the holiday shopping season kicks off, retailers can expect an overwhelming rush. While this could be a good time for retailers to target more sales and boost profits, there could be other aspects that could put retailers in a spot of bother.

One of the effects of the holiday shopping rush is that customers are more demanding, have less time and attention span, and are not willing to compromise. In other words, they may become very difficult to handle and retailers could have a tough time managing them.

In order to help retailers negotiate such occurrences of dealing with not-so-pleasant holiday shopping experiences, here are some simple tips that could prove to be effective:

Listen: Shoppers who are upset need to be heard. So allow your customers to speak their heart out about anything that is unpleasant to them. Active listening would allow retailers to consciously assimilate and comprehend the issues their customers are facing, rather than being judgmental towards them. Active listening will be reflected in the retailers approach towards understanding the customers and this would leave a positive impression on the customers. They will feel that they are being given a fair importance and thus instill a sense of trust in the retail business resolving their issues.

Act: Once the customers have vented out their problems to the retailers, it is now up to the retailers to act. They need to take the necessary measures to resolve the customers’ issues. Retailers need to come up with a solution that would be feasible for both, their customers and themselves. If the retail business is unable to resolve the problem upfront, they should request for an appropriate time and respond within the stipulated time.

Repeat: There will be multiple instances where retailers will come across customers that are very difficult to handle and manage. The two steps mentioned above thus need to be employed time and again by retail businesses to reduce the chances of lost sales and the number of disgruntled customers they would need to deal with.

Fore planning, resilience, the right mind-set and treating every customer as an important asset for their business could enable retailers to effectively listen to their customers and act appropriately, making them the preferred retailer that customers go to for a happy shopping experience.

Stay tuned to know the 10 tips that could add extra bling to the festive season sales and profits.

3 P’s for Effective Retailing

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Retail as a business, is highly complicated as there are numerous aspects and operations involved in its successful and smooth functioning. Right from stocking a product in the store to the customer checking out of the store with that product, the entire flow can be broken down into intermediate activities that need to be managed carefully for the overall business to be complete. Now, with the influence of advanced technology, the scope of retail has further expanded to incorporate a host of other concepts and functions, thus complicating the whole process. But from the olden days till date, to run a retail business effectively, no matter how complicated it is, there are 3 basic and important aspects that need to be taken care of:

People – Retail is all about people. The retailer or the business owner along with the other employees including the store staff and most importantly, the buying customer are all important for retail. Even in the case of online retailing or e-tailing, there are people working in the background for the business to run efficiently, as well as to ensure that orders are fulfilled right up to the customer’s doorstep. The need of the hour for retail businesses to survive is to become ‘customer-centric’, and customers needless to say again, are people. The importance of people cannot be stressed any further and the right people management, be it customers or employees, would definitely go a long way in making the business better.

Product – The core objective of retail is to ensure that customers can procure/avail the products/services they desire, when they need them. In simple words, retailing is where demand for a certain product is successfully fulfilled by the retail channels. As such, the ‘product’ is a necessary entity for the business to take place. Retailers need to be aware of the products that customers are looking for and have them readily available and at reasonable costs. Having the right product at the right place at the right time in the right quantity and at the right price is key for running a successful retail business.

Process – A business is set of processes that should be carried out effectively to achieve the objectives of the business. In retail, there are a host of processes that need to be undertaken and managed for the proper functioning of the business. The right systems in place along with pre-defined rules to guide each and every process, and timely monitoring to assess the performance of each function is highly essential for any retail business to not only sustain, but also to garner profit and grow.

The right people with the right products and the right processes, and effective management of the three will help business owners to get it right in retail.

New Age Retail – Business Culture And Engagement

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The retail industry is one of the main drivers of employment around the world and a major contributor to the GDP increase of most Asian countries. The retail arena has been transformed through multiple market upheavals and strategic developments – from opening economies leading to true globalization in the industry to emerging markets rising as dominant competitors. Parallel to this, technological evolution created burgeoning business domains e.g. ecommerce, mobile applications, social media communication etc. establishing changing consumer preferences and expectations.

The industry has been historically the first avenue of employment for many new workers. The changing rules of retail combined with the upsurge of young, educated workforce in Asian countries has greatly propelled business growth and foreign investment. There is a need for stabilizing business culture and engagement which encourages the workforce to pursue opportunities in retail and form a stronger industry foundation.

“Asia has the potential to drive innovation in areas such as e-commerce and in developing new products. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are home to some of the world’s leading electronics companies. And, China and India’s consumers are some of the world’s most active users of mobile technology and social media,” says Michael Cheng, PwC’s Retail and Consumer Leader for Asia Pacific and Hong Kong/China. “While shopping via social media platforms is still a new trend, it won’t be long before consumers jump on the s-commerce bandwagon.”

To understand and harness the dynamics of new-age retail, leading retailers and industry experts from across the world will be congregating at the 5th Annual Retail Congress Asia Pacific 2015, Singapore. As Key Partner to the event, ETP will be leading discussions on Asian retail and its emerging markets.