Merchandising

From J.D. Associates. Key performance indicators only tell you how well you are performing. To actually improve your performance you first have to know what KPIs mean and how to use them. In the first of three parts in this series we look at the role KPIs play in answering the big questions successful retail companies ask themselves to achieve outstanding results.

From Revionics, Inc. Seasonality is a predictable cyclic or repetitious behavior in demand for products. Seasonality is distinguished from fluctuations in demand due to noise or causal activities like price- or promotionally driven demand in that it varies independently of these factors. Seasonal demand variation is often tied to weather, holidays or specific events.

From Predictix. In the last 12 months, the retail industry has seen shockwaves bigger than in the last fifty years. Their business has fundamentally changed. Retailers and brands who until recently had a clear sense of who their customers were and how, when, what, why and at what prices they bought, find themselves in a new world where all of these variables are in constant flux. This continuous change is limiting their ability to plan, forecast, price, and replenish effectively. Thus, retailers and brands are left facing a dilemma: They need new technology to adapt their processes and to respond more rapidly to their changing markets, but they can't afford the massive up-front capital expenditures or lengthy implementations associated with new technology.

From QuantiSense. In this edition of the "Retailing with Insight" Thought Leadership Series, QuantiSense Senior Advisor explains what retailers can learn from football, and how the Playbook is an essential element to any vertically-focused BI and analytics application.

What does it mean to be a customer-centric retailer? Watch, listen, and read along with this online session to learn the answer to this question. Research by IDC Global Retail Insights describes the state of customer-centricity in the industry. DemandTec and Precima highlight best practices for merchandising and marketing. Leading retailers Best Buy and PharmaPlus present practical case studies of their own customer-centric initiatives.

From Applied Predictive Technologies. A Fortune 500 retailer recently struggled with setting the right amount to mark down prices for distinct types of products. The retailer was concerned that the company’s discounts were too aggressive but did not know whether a smaller price reduction would slow sales of those products and ultimately hurt profitability. The retailer decided to test less aggressive price cuts for a subset of the products in the store. The impact on profitability was still unclear. In need of a precise understanding of the costs and benefits of different markdown strategies, the retailer turned to APT for guidance.

In this Shop.org Online Session, Patti Freeman Evans moderates three retailer case studies that show concrete examples of innovations in customer-focused merchandising. Find out what eBags does with customer comments and reviews, how myShape pulls robust profile information from their customers, and how Borders has gone beyond multichannel to cross-channel retailing. Patti interviews each speaker and discusses in detail their philosophy about being customer-focused, their thought process behind each innovation, and the results that have occurred since implementation.