The Principles of Retailing
Part A
Considering the intensified competition in the retail industry, independent retails are forced to use a wide range of promotional tools and strategies to compete with large retailers and its peers, as well. The major tools used by independent retails include, but are not limited to, advertising, building public relations, personal selling and active sales promotion. Retails, which ignore using promotional tools “are unable to satisfy customers and can expect to lose market share to rivals offering better products and services at lower prices” (Grove, 2010). Advertising of services may be delivered to customers through a wide range of channels – big boards, newspapers, journals, and TV.
The major advantages of advertising from a perspective of independent retailer include the following:
Reaching a large number of people in selected region, town, district, etc.;
Communication channel, mainly newspaper or TV, is available at each home;
Printed advertising or TV advertising has permanence.
Reader can refer back to newspaper advertising, and TV advertising is also repeated several times;
Retailer can easily modify advertising and add new details on a short notice in weekly printed newspaper;
Flexibility in terms of the size of the ad and using additional instruments, such as pictures, graphs or other supplements that can draw reader’s attention.
Major disadvantages include the following:
Considering that there is a large number of advertising printed every day, advertising may not be noticed by the reader among different ads. Printed or TV advisements have a short lifespan, as people usually read newspaper once and do not watch repeated TV ads;
Building public relations is aimed at evaluating public attitudes, identifying entity’s policies or actions of public interest, and implementing actions to win public acceptance.
The major tools of building public relations include speeches, social events, TV social advertisement, mobile marketing, etc.
The major advantages of public relations are the following:
Products publicity:
Builds marketplace excitements, when necessary (for example, before launching new service);
Provide company’s and services information to opinion leaders;
Explains the reasons to buy (promotion of the company’s brand and major strengths at the market);
Build relations with potential investors;
The main disadvantage is usually high costs, which independent retailer cannot bear. Sale promotion is using short-term incentives to sell the products. Such incentives include special sales, discounts, coupons, distributing samples, etc. Sale promotion increases short-term sales and attracts new customers.
The major limitations of sales promotions are the following:
Customers will not purchase goods at normal prices and will wait for sales, discounts and other actions;
Competitors may use the same sale promotion actions, which will actually decrease prices below the acceptable level for certain goods. Finally, personal selling is promotion of goods on a person – to – person basis. It allows building good customers relationship. However, the major limitation is that …
