1. Report for outlining the business operation?
2. Additional option to improve the customer service?
The retail industry deals with selling of the goods along with merchandise from any particular location. These locations might include the boutique or kiosk and department store. It further may come from small and individual lots or mail from the direct consumption done by the customers. It might also include services that are subordinated like the “delivery” (Lewrick et al., 2015). The “Oz Supermarket” has been one of such retail chains which are built to decrease the exit queues towards the “check out point”.
Besides the important economic flow and ebb in the buying seasons the retail industry has been facing various problems overall. These are often dealt with.
The following report explores the outlining of the retail operation. In order to achieve its aim, the steps undertaken are also assessed. Recommendations are made to improve the business process.
The purchasers in retail may exist in the form of both business and individuals. Any “retailer” buys products or goods in huge quantities from the importers and manufactures in commerce. This can be done directly or via the wholesaler. Then it is sold in smaller quantities to the end-user. The retail establishments have been referred to as the “stores” or “shops”. The retailers lie at the end part of the “supply chain” (Çifci, Ekinci & Whyatt, 2014). The manufacturing markets view the retailing process as an urgent section of the distribution strategy overall. The term “retailer” can be applied where any service provider also delivers the requirements of huge number of customers. The electricity power for the public utility can be a good example of it.
For the organizations like Oz Supermarket, the shops may lie on the residential streets or the shopping streets. It may consist of very little houses in a shopping mall. There could also be no house at all (Rezaei, Fahim, & Tavasszy, 2014). Further, the shopping streets might be for the pedestrians only. In several cases the shops might possess a full or incomplete roof to protect the customers. The online retailing is a type of the “electronic commerce”. It is used for the B2C or the “business-to-customer” transactions and orders from mail. These are the forms of the “non-shop” retailing.
The shopping is indicated as the act to buy products. In several cases it might be done for the necessities like clothing and food. On the other hand, in some cases it can be performed as any recreational activity. The “recreational shopping” often deals with just looking at and not buying. This is termed as the window shopping (Zakaria et al., 2014). For the non-shopping criterion it can be turned as only browsing that ultimately does not result in purchasing.
The Oz Supermarket as adopted the PayWave technology for its customers. It is the latest, secure and contactless technology. One can spend less time at the cash counter. Further it provides freedom to perform the activities that the client wishes to. It never accepts any cash. The customer has to enter the card given during the entry for passing. There are special readers called RFID that are kept installed at the trolleys. As soon as any item is picked or selected, it becomes queued for the payment. Whenever it has been removed the item gets deleted. The customers go on bagging their items while shopping. As the shopping is finished, technically the customer has been absent from the store. The sum total of the items purchased is charged automatically to the user as he walks out of the shop. There has been no queue at the “check-out” point (Zolnowski, Weiß & Bohmann, 2014).
There could be many customers who are devoid of such cards. This includes the children or the tourists. They approach at the front disk to deposit cash temporarily. They are issued with a PayWave card provided by the store. This allows them in shopping. They are capable of leaving the store just like other customers. The balance is needed to give back in cash. It may also be recorder in the database for balancing during future visits (Amin & Broadbent, 2015). Whenever there has been any insufficient amount to cover up any purchases the alarm is set to be ringing. The tag to each item with the RFID chips exerts additional overheads. The store manages the cost as interest from the customers who had been in rush. The summary stations of the shopping have been placed strategically in every corner of the store. It allows the customers to observe the in detailed list of the items present in trolley (Hançerlio?ullar?, ?en & Aktunç, 2016). The store parks of car have been also timed by the minute when the shopping period is at its peak. During the non-peak times the rates of car park has been lower. The disabling of the parking has been free.
The recommendations to Oz Supermarket are as follows:
The using of the cloud-based software:
It can be helpful in tracking and managing the inventory within real time. This is due to the reason that the retailers has been struggling to balance the customer behavior that are uncertain. They also further face problems from the complex and long supply chains. So, the cloud based software is helpful to make into use.
Making sure that the supply chain and the marketing supply chains are in synchronization:
Whenever there has been any executing of a promotion, many retailers unnoticed or avoid the alignment in marketing teams and supply chain. The above recommendation is important if any successful launching of the promotion is desired (Pantano, 2017).
Reducing the turnover:
The employee turnover has been a vital factor disrupting the productivity of retail. It has been hard to get the best out of every individual. It occurs when the team members has been leaving constantly to pursue additional scopes. By engaging them more, the retailers extend the presence of any employee. This saves them money and time.
Conclusion:
From the very first, the retailers along with their suppliers have been focusing on delivering quality goods to more number of distributions. This was also meant to be done faster. However, in the present scenario they have been under more pressure than before. The retailers require knowing the places where the things are at every time in order to stay competitive. This helps in redirecting the shipments, responding to latest demands and rebalances the inventories that are on fly. Additionally, they might face any barrier regarding the “supply chain”. Moreover, they could be unable to receive products in the stores or to the customers. In such cases the retailers along with their suppliers risk in losing their customers. For this reason the above recommendations might be useful.
The retail business posses direct communication with the end-users of the services and goods within the value chain. This business acts as the intermediate force between the suppliers and end-users like the manufacturers or the wholesalers. Thus they have in the situation to interact effectively to the changing preferences and responses of the clients towards the sales person or suppliers of the company. This has helped the markets and the manufacturers to define their products again. The changes to the components of the strategy of marketing are also done accordingly (McWilliams, Anitsal & Anitsal, 2016). The manufacturers have needed an effective network for retail. This has been both for the product’s reach and obtaining a strong platform for point-of-purchase advertising and promotions.
The importance of the retailing in the overall value chain is needed to be realized while interacting with the customers. In this manner various manufacturers have intruded into the business of retail. They have set up various exclusive stores for their company’s brands. Direct interaction with the customers has not only occurred here but this method has also served as the advertisement for the firm. It has also helped in delivering the manufacturers by bargaining ability with other retailers. These other retailers are those who have stocked the product of the retailers of the business concerned here (Cartwright, 2013). Moreover, the retailing process has also provided extensive sales, supporting of people for products. These have been intensive in information like the cases of “consumer durables”.
Customer feedback:
The environment of the retail store acts as a unique role in current world of technologies. The customers create relationships with the firms by various channels and devices (Lee, 2014). However, there are instances where element of the in-person interaction are added in the firms. Here the associates represent voice and face of the company. The use of surveys gathering the voice of customer indicates about the experience at the store. This has been an effective method top understand the associate. The measurement of the impact of the tactical behaviors is done here. Adding various tactical questions of behavioral type helps in identifying particular behaviors of the associates. The quantifying of their influence on the satisfaction of the customer also helps. Moreover, the satisfaction of the customer could be tied to the “bottom line”. This could be done by looking at the behavioral information along with transactional information. This helps in understanding the primary behaviors has been influencing the revenue. Everyone should be involved in the feedback process.
As the corporate believe in anything as important, it helps the staffs to understand their responsibility in the success of the company. This motivates them to continue quality work. The tracking and socializing of progress occurs in the customer feedback process. Here the results of progress are needed to be tracked. In the executive level, regular reports are needed to be sent indicating the influence of minor improvements. It is also done due to designate any executive champion socializing results from below (Ivanauskien? & Volung?nait?, 2014). Lastly the celebrations of victories are done. As any staff feel recognized and are appreciated for their quality activities, they become more receptive towards the constructive criticism.
Product quality review:
The significance of product quality review should be considered in retail. This is due to its higher quality in price relation and the value for customer. The product qualities are assessed by eight dimensions of product quality. They are product features, product performance, product conformance, serviceability, perceived quality, durability and aesthetics of products. Highly competitive and intensified industry of retails has been compelling companies to go through the strategies yielding larger value for the customers (Germann et al., 2014). Various small retailers would be unable to survive in the market due to the big retailers providing higher value from the perspective of quality of service and quality of product.
The negative product quality review can effect in declining the quality of the product. Despite this, there have been various positive aspects to the e-commerce. The issue of decline in quality of product can be eradicated in near future. This must be alarming to the makers of public policy and consumers those who champion the relevance of the online shopping (Choi et al., 2015). In the current competitive market of retailing, as there is any improvement in the service quality the expectation of the customer and the lateral demands at the level of service improves with time.
Using the “Customer Relationship Management” software:
These types of software are also useful in managing the experience of the customers. The “Customer Relationship Management” or CRM software covers a wide collection of application. It is designed to businesses control various processes. This includes automate sales, knowledge and training, resources or assets, marketing, customer support and customer interaction. As the CRM software helps in managing the relationship between the business and the customer, likewise the CRM software systems are utilized to manage various elements (Pousttchi & Hufenbach, 2014). This includes the contact wins, sales leads, clients, contacts, enterprise and the employees.
The current software is highly customizable and scalable. They view the opportunities of the business with the predictive analytics. It also includes personalized customer services and streamlines operations. This has been on the basis of the known history of the customer. The prior interactions of them with the business are also looked at. However, the CRM has been difficult to use in several cases. The main concerns of the CRM solutions have been the security, scalability and stability as an “Enterprise Application”. The usability has never been the main portion of CRM that has resulted in failure of software projects more often. This has been largely attributed to the undue complexity (Venkatesh, 2016). Despite these with the rise in adopting of the CRM applications, the current CRM “software vendors” utilize the “usability as the central section” of the products.
References:
Amin, A., & Broadbent, D. (2015). Importance of Green Service Offerings for French, Dutch, Swedish and UK Retailers in their Selection of Transport Operators: A study of French, Dutch, Swedish and UK companies operating in the retail industry.
Cartwright, J. (2013). A Comparative Case Approach of the Retail Industry: Comparing the Nature of HRM, Emotional Labour and the Influence of the Customer.
Choi, S. H., Yang, Y. X., Yang, B., & Cheung, H. H. (2015). Item-level RFID for enhancement of customer shopping experience in apparel retail. Computers in Industry, 71, 10-23.
Çifci, S., Ekinci, Y., & Whyatt, G. (2014, July). A cross validation of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) scales in fashion retail industry. In 2014 Global Marketing Conference at Singapore (pp. 1459-1468).
Germann, F., Lilien, G. L., Fiedler, L., & Kraus, M. (2014). Do retailers benefit from deploying customer analytics?. Journal of Retailing, 90(4), 587-593.
Hançerlio?ullar?, G., ?en, A., & Aktunç, E. A. (2016). Demand uncertainty and inventory turnover performance: An empirical analysis of the US retail industry. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 46(6/7), 681-708.
Ivanauskien?, N., & Volung?nait?, J. (2014). Relations between service quality and customer loyalty: An empirical investigation of retail chain stores in emerging markets. American International Journal of Social Science, 3(2), 113-120.
Lee, W. H. (2014). A Study on the Customer Behavior of Using Retail Industry Application.
Lewrick, M., Williams, R., Maktoba, O., Tjandra, N., & Lee, Z. C. (2015). Radical and incremental innovation effectiveness in relation to market orientation in the retail industry: triggers, drivers, and supporters. Successful Technological Integration for Competitve Advantage in Retail Settings, IGI Global, 239-268.
McWilliams, A., Anitsal, I., & Anitsal, M. M. (2016). Customer versus Employee Perceptions: A Review of Self-Service Technology Options as Illustrated in Self-Checkouts in US Retail Industry. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 20(1), 79.
Pantano, E., Priporas, C. V., Sorace, S., & Iazzolino, G. (2017). Does innovation-orientation lead to retail industry growth? Empirical evidence from patent analysis. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 34, 88-94.
Pousttchi, K., & Hufenbach, Y. (2014). Engineering the value network of the customer interface and marketing in the data-rich retail environment. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 18(4), 17-42.
Rezaei, J., Fahim, P. B., & Tavasszy, L. (2014). Supplier selection in the airline retail industry using a funnel methodology: Conjunctive screening method and fuzzy AHP. Expert Systems with Applications, 41(18), 8165-8179.
Venkatesh, J. (2016). RFID technology: improving efficiencies and creating a better customer experience in retail industry. International Journal of Management, IT and Engineering, 6(12), 81-94.
Zakaria, I., Rahman, B. A., Othman, A. K., Yunus, N. A. M., Dzulkipli, M. R., & Osman, M. A. F. (2014). The relationship between loyalty program, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in retail industry: A case study. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 129, 23-30.
Zolnowski, A., Weiß, C., & Bohmann, T. (2014, January). Representing Service Business Models with the Service Business Model Canvas–The Case of a Mobile Payment Service in the Retail Industry. In system sciences (HICSS), 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 718-727). IEEE.
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