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Retail Horizons: Benchmarks and Forecasts

Retail Horizons is the definitive source of benchmarking information and in-depth analysis for retailers. As an annual study, it provides fundamental retail metrics on industry statistics such as sales and distribution channels, annual payroll, advertising and public relations efforts, inventory controls, employee benefits, and information technology.

Latest Edition: 2007/2008 Survey

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Retail Industry Indicators

Retail Industry Indicators is a comprehensive report on trends in the retail companies. Drawing from official government data, supplemented by industry surveys, it presents up-to-date information on a variety of topics that describe the industry. These include including retailers’ contribution to the overall U.S. economy, retail store and online sales levels and trends, employment and compensation levels and trends, and information about retail companies, including inventory shrinkage, profitability and size of retailers.

Latest Edition: 2008

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Customer Service and Sales Skills Standards

National skill standards in Customer Service and Sales are available to help employers build employee skills and careers. Approved standards are the basis for National Certification in Professional Customer Service and can be integrated into existing training and education programs. This hands-on publication contains the industry-developed standards as guides for employers, educators, and trainers.

For more information, contact the NRF Foundation at (202) 626-8130.
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Retailing Smarts Series Workbooks and Leader's Guides

Designed specifically for the retail sales associate, the Crisp Retailing Smarts Series is based on skill standards developed by a team of reatilers and educators under the leadership of the National Retail Federation. Th topics and inforamtion covered in the Series reflect what retail employers across the country agree is needed to succeed and grow in a retail career, regardless of the size or nature of teh retail busines. Workbooks include: Get to Know Your Customer, Meet Your Customers' Needs, Build a Continuous Relationship, Go the Extra Mile, Explaining Features and Benefits, Building the Sale, Closing the Sale, Completing the Sales Transaction, Preventing Loss, Promoting Safety, Stocking the Shelves, and Keeping Up Appearances.

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NRF Standard Color and Size Codes

The NRF Standard Color and Size Codes give retailers, vendors and manufacturers a common language for product color and size identification for EDI purposes that supplements the information conveyed by UPC codes. For products that have a color and/or size, an NRF Color Code and/or an NRF Size Code are required Minimum Data Elements for implementation of the VICS EDI Price Sales Catalog Transaction Set (832). In addition to cost savings related to improved inventory management, fewer errors due to manual entry and reduced time for new item set up and maintenance, use of the codes allows retailers and their vendor partners to do automated analysis for sales trends by sizes and colors, and helps guide merchandise assortment planning. This helps ensure that the right merchandise is in the right place at the right time, benefiting not just retailers and vendors, but consumers, too. The NRF Standard Color and Size codes are only available electronically, either from our partners GXS, Inovis or SPS Commerce, or by purchasing them from the NRF Store in Microsoft Access 2003 format.

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RFPs and Schema

NRF and ARTS are developing a library of standard RFPs (or ITTs as they are sometimes known) to help retailers select the “right” software applications for their specific business practices. The creation of a comprehensive RFP can be extremely costly. Many companies spend an inordinate amount of time and effort creating an RFP for a particular system, and if their document has overlooked or is missing key requirements, it can become even more costly to the company in the long run. RFP documents have been released for the following applications: Master Data Management, Point of Sale (POS) Software v2.0 POS Exception Reporting, POS Signature Capture Systems, Price Optimization, Workforce Management Systems, and Warehouse Management System. Standard RFPs significantly shorten the time retailers spend researching new applications to suit their business processes. A joint project of NRF and ARTS, members of both organizations can obtain them free of charge from either the NRF or ARTS websites. Nonmembers may purchase them for a fee of USD 5,000 in the NRF Store.

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The State of Retailing Online

Every year, Shop.org and Forrester Research partner to provide the eCommerce community with an update on the state of the online retail industry. The State of Retailing Online (SORO) study is the highly anticipated annual research bringing details of Marketing, Merchandising and Profitability to the community. This research serves many functions, from allowing retailers to benchmark their performance against competitors, to enlightening retailers to marketing and merchandising best practices and guiding financial planning. Shop.org publishes three SORO reports: The Marketing Report, The Merchandising Report, and The Profitability Report.

Latest Edition: 2008

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NRF Compensation and Benefits Survey

NRF conducted the 2008 Retailer Compensation and Benefits Survey in partnership with Mercer Human Resource Consulting. This survey provides benefits prevalence, compensation data with STI amounts, and extensive HR practices for all major retail subsets including specialty retailers. This survey describes aggregate participation levels, disclosure guidelines, survey usage, and overall statistics of theparticipating organizations by size (revenue and employee), merchandise category, market category,organization type (corporate, division, subsidiary), and ownership (public, private). It also includes statistics on pay structure and pay increase practices within the retail and general industries.

NRF Members receive a significant discount off the non-participant price.
Latest Edition: 2008

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Retail IT Budget Benchmarking Survey

AMR Research and the National Retail Federation’s CIO Council conducted their fifth annual benchmarking study, comparing 2007 IT spending with 2008 IT budgets for participating retailers. Based on line-item level detail across all major budget categories, this Report provides strategic insight into retail software application priorities, outsourcing plans, and security and compliance initiatives.

Latest Edition: 2008

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Organized Retail Theft: Raising Awareness, Offering Solutions

Organized Retail Theft (ORT) is the most serious security issue facing many retailers, including supermarkets, drug stores, mass merchandisers, and apparel and accessory retailers. Business leaders, security and law enforcement professionals, prosecutors and judges will all appreciate learning why ORT has grown in the last ten years almost unabated and why losses to professional shoplifting are likely understated in national security surveys. The report answers questions about why infant formula is the primary target for most rings operating in supermarkets and why cargo theft, especially of food and other products intended for supermarkets and drug stores, has increased over the past four years. Readers will learn how ORT rings operate and how they are structured. The report also provides information on the types of merchandise stolen, how the merchandise is stolen by professional thieves, and what recommended steps retail management, law enforcement, trade associations, and others should take to combat ORT.

Latest Edition: 2005

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Customer Centric Retailing

This study, published by the National Retail Federation in cooperation with Ogden Associates presents the status and trends in CRM and Customer Centricity, based on 5 years of research, and with the participation of over 200 retailers. The research illuminates what retailers are doing, and are likely to do in the future, to gain customer insight and use it effectively to enhance marketing, merchandising, and cross-channel operations.

Latest Edition: 2006

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STORES Buying Guides

STORES Media publishes three buying guides annually. The Retail Industry Buying Guide is the industry's premier source for products and services used in retail operations. STORES' Software Sourcebook is the definitive resource for retail-specific solutions; playing a critical role in helping to achieve optimum retail operating efficiency. The LPinformation Supplier Directory is the industry's in-depth resource guide for retail-specific loss prevention solutions, listing products and services exclusively intended to achieve optimum loss prevention efficiency.

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