REASONS FOR STUDYING RETAILING

Retailing is an important field to study because of its impact on the economy, its functions in distribution, and its relationship with firms selling goods and services to retailers for their resale or use. These factors are discussed next. A fourth factor for students of retailing is the broad range of career opportunities

Many Career Opportunities Are Available in Retailing

Although the typical entry-level positions in retailing for a post secondary graduate include retail management trainee, department/sales manager, and assistant buyer, it is generally difficult to classify retail career opportunities—because there are so many of them. Most large retail organizations can be described as “small cities.” As such, these retailers offer career paths in almost every aspect of business, such as buying, store operations, accounting, financial management, human resources, advertising, public relations, marketing research, and so on.

The ideal candidate pursuing a retail career should possess the following qualities:

● Be a “people person” to understand customer needs and be an effective team member.

● Be flexible to be able to perform a variety of tasks throughout the workday.

● Be decisive to make quick decisions that are well thought out.

● Have analytical skills to analyze data and predict trends.

● Have stamina to be able to work under pressure for long time periods.

What makes retailing so fascinating is the constant change that a retail executive must understand and manage. Among the areas of retailing that are now undergoing rapid change are the increased importance on non-store retailing, the focus on customer satisfaction, and the application of technology to all areas of retailing. These changes represent both opportunities and challenges.

Retailing encompasses the business activities involved in selling goods and services to consumers for their personal, family, or household use. While retailing can be defined as including every sale to the final consumer (ranging from cars to apparel to meals at restaurants), we normally focus on those businesses that sell “merchandise generally without transformation, while rendering services incidental to the sale of merchandise. Retailing today is at an interesting crossroads. On the one hand, retail sales are at their highest point in history. Wal-Mart is now the leading company in the world in terms of sales—

Ahead of ExxonMobil, General Motors, and other manufacturing giants. New technologies are improving retail productivity. There are lots of opportunities to start a new retail business—or work for an existing one—and to become a franchisee. Global retailing possibilities abound. On the other hand, retailers face numerous challenges. Many consumers are bored with shopping or do not have much time for it. Some locales have too many stores, and retailers often spur one another into frequent price cutting (and low profit margins). Customer service expectations are high at a time when more retailers offer self-service and automated systems.

At the same time, many retailers remain unsure about what to do with the Web; they are still grappling with the emphasis to place on image enhancement, customer information and feed- back, and sales transactions.