Retail consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department

store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the
purchaser.[1] Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be
individuals or businesses. In commerce, a "retailer" buys goods or products in large quantities
from manufacturers or importers, either directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells smaller
quantities to the end-user. Retail establishments are often called shops or stores. Retailers are at
the end of the supply chain. Manufacturing marketers see the process of retailing as a necessary
part of their overall distribution strategy. The term "retailer" is also applied where a service
provider services the needs of a large number of individuals, such as a public utility, like electric
power.

Shops may be on residential streets, shopping streets with few or no houses or in a shopping
mall. Shopping streets may be for pedestrians only. Sometimes a shopping street has a partial or
full roof to protect customers from precipitation. Online retailing, a type of electronic commerce
used for business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions and mail order, are forms of non-shop
retailing.

Shopping generally refers to the act of buying products. Sometimes this is done to obtain
necessities such as food and clothing; sometimes it is done as a recreational activity.
Recreational shopping often involves window shopping (just looking, not buying) and browsing
and does not always result in a purchase.

Retail comes from the French word retailler, which refers to "cutting off my hands, clip and
divide" in terms of tailoring (1365). It first was recorded as a noun with the meaning of a "sale in
small quantities" in 1433 (French). Its literal meaning for retail was to "cut off, shred, off my
toes paring".[2] Like the French, the word retail in both Dutch and German (detailhandel and
Einzelhandel respectively), also refers to the sale of small quantities of items.

The world of retail marketing just got a lot more personal. Consumers are embracing
new ideas and technologies and expecting their retailers to take advantage of those innovations
to create a more individualized shopping experience. Retailers have many more creative
channels available to customize their interaction with customers, and new tools keep emerging
to withstand in the competitive arena. These advances allow retailers to quickly respond to
changing customer expectations and offer creative encounters that can improve brand loyalty
and bottom-line sales. These new trends increase the channels through which retailers can reach
customers.
Types of retail outlets

Inside a supermarket in Russia

A marketplace is a location where goods and services are exchanged. The traditional market
square is a city square where traders set up stalls and buyers browse the merchandise. This kind
of market is very old, and countless such markets are still in operation around the whole world.

In some parts of the world, the retail business is still dominated by small family-run stores, but
this market is increasingly being taken over by large retail chains.

Retail is usually classified by type of products as follows:

 Food products
 Hard goods ("hardline retailers") - appliances, electronics, furniture, sporting goods, etc.
 Soft goods - clothing, apparel, and other fabrics.

There are the following types of retailers by marketing strategy:

 Department stores - very large stores offering a huge assortment of "soft" and "hard
goods; often bear a resemblance to a collection of specialty stores. A retailer of such store
carries variety of categories and has broad assortment at average price. They offer
considerable customer service.
 Discount stores - tend to offer a wide array of products and services, but they compete
mainly on price offers extensive assortment of merchandise at affordable and cut-rate
prices. Normally retailers sell less fashion-oriented brands. However the service is
inadequate.;
 General merchandise store - a hybrid between a department store and discount store;
 Supermarkets - sell mostly food products;
 Warehouse stores - warehouses that offer low-cost, often high-quantity goods piled on
pallets or steel shelves; warehouse clubs charge a membership fee;
 Variety stores or "dollar stores" - these offer extremely low-cost goods, with limited
selection;
 Demographic - retailers that aim at one particular segment (e.g., high-end retailers
focusing on wealthy individuals).
  Mom-And-Pop (or Kirana Stores as they call them in India): is a retail outlet that is
owned and operated by individuals. The range of products are very selective and few in
numbers. These stores are seen in local community often are family-run businesses. The
square feet area of the store depends on the store holder.
 Specialty Stores: A typical specialty store gives attention to a particular category and
provides high level of service to the customers. A pet store that specializes in selling dog
food would be regarded as a specialty store. However, branded stores also come under
this format. For example if a customer visits a Reebok or Gap store then they find just
Reebok and Gap products in the respective stores.
 Convenience Stores: is essentially found in residential areas. They provide limited
amount of merchandise at more than average prices with a speedy checkout. This store is
ideal for emergency and immediate purchases.
 Hypermarkets: provides variety and huge volumes of exclusive merchandise at low
margins. The operating cost is comparatively less than other retail formats. A classic
example is the Metro™ in Bangalore.
 Supermarkets: is a self service store consisting mainly of grocery and limited products on
non food items. They may adopt a Hi-Lo or an EDLP strategy for pricing. The
supermarkets can be anywhere between 20,000-40,000 square feet. Example: SPAR™
supermarket.
 Malls: has a range of retail shops at a single outlet. They endow with products, food and
entertainment under a roof. Example: Sigma mall and Garuda mall in Bangalore, Express
Avenue in Chennai.
 Category Killers or Category Specialist: By supplying wide assortment in a single
category for lower prices a retailer can "kill" that category for other retailers. For few
categories, such as electronics, the products are displayed at the centre of the store and
sales person will be available to address customer queries and give suggestions when
required. Other retail format stores are forced to reduce the prices if a category specialist
retail store is present in the vicinity. For example: Pai Electronics™ store in Bangalore,
Tata Croma.
 E-tailers: The customer can shop and order through internet and the merchandise are
dropped at the customer's doorstep. Here the retailers use drop shipping technique. They
accept the payment for the product but the customer receives the product directly from
the manufacturer or a wholesaler. This format is ideal for customers who do not want to
travel to retail stores and are interested in home shopping. However it is important for the
customer to be wary about defective products and non secure credit card transaction.
Example: Amazon and Ebay.
 Vending Machines: This is an automated piece of equipment wherein customers can drop
in the money in machine and acquire the products. For example: Soft drinks vending at
Bangalore Airport.

Some stores take a no frills approach, while others are "mid-range" or "high end", depending on
what income level they target.
Store manager

A store manager is the person ultimately responsible for the day-to-day operations (or
management) of a retail store. All employees working in the store report to the store manager. A
store manager reports to a district or general manager.

Roles and responsibilities

Responsibilities of a store manager may include:

 Human Resources, specifically: recruiting, hiring, training and development, performance

management, payroll, and schedule workplace scheduling
 Store business operations, including managing profit and loss, facility management, safety and
security, loss prevention (also called shrink), and banking
 Product management, including ordering, receiving, price changes, handling damaged products,
and returns
 Team Development, facilitating staff learning and development
 Problem solving, handling unusual circumstances

Sales generation

A store manager must meet monthly, quarterly, or annual sales goals, depending on the
company's fiscal cycle. This involves setting individual sales goals (quotas), holding contests for
employees, or offering sales promotions. The manager may also receive a monetary incentive (or
"bonus") tied to financial performance over a specific period. This incentive may be based on net
sales, profitability, or both. Thus, the store manager may be forced to reduce payroll
expenditures by decreasing employees' hours, or otherwise reducing operating costs.

Safety and security

The General Manager must post Material Safety Data Sheets for their employees for any
hazardous materials used in the store.

The Store manager is the store's primary key-holder and may be called to the store before,
during, or after business hours in the event of an emergency. They are also responsible for the
safety of all customers and employees on store premises. Store managers may be required to hold
safety meetings, especially as dictated by union practices in cases where store employees belong
to a union.

Division of responsibility

A store manager may have several subordinates who have management-level responsibility.
These employees may be called assistant managers, department managers, supervisors, key
holders, shift leads, or leads. A store manager has over-all responsibility for all day to day
activity of the store. Managing & controlling staff, and planning are essential points of the store
manager.

Hiring, training and development

The store manager is responsible for hiring, training, and in some cases, development, of
employees. The manager must ensure staffing levels are adequate to effectively operate the store,
and ensure employees receive training necessary for their job responsibilities. Managers may be
responsible for developing employees so the company can promote employees from within and
develop future leaders, potentially for employment at other locations. these kind of roll store
manager has to be do according to company to company.

Visual merchandising and inventory control

Store managers ensure that visual merchandising is consistent with customers' expectations of the
brand.

In retail locations, store managers are responsible for visual merchandising. Many companies
communicate how to merchandise their stores using direction such as planograms to indicate
product placement. While managers have a varying degree of autonomy in deviating from
corporate direction, it is important to ensure that stores are compliant with the company's brand
image. Managers must ensure that the proper amount of inventory is displayed for customers to
purchase, by ensuring that shelves and racks remain stocked and that product is frequently
rotated out of storage areas. Managers are also concerned with shrinkage, and must ensure that
merchandising techniques and customer service skills minimize the possibility of product being
stolen.

The Hidden Challenges

Modern retailing is all about directly having "first hand experience" with customers, giving
them such a satiable experience that they would like to enjoy again and again. Providing
great experience to customers can easily be said than done. Thus challenges like retail
differentiation, merchandising mix, supply chain management and competition from
supplier's brands are the talk of the day. In India, as we are moving to the next phase of
retail development, each endeavor to offer experiential shopping.  One of the key
observations by customers is that it is very difficult to find the uniqueness of retail stores.
The problem: retail differentiation.
The next problem in setting up organized retail operations is that of supply chain logistics.
India lacks a strong supply chain when compared to Europe or the USA. The existing supply
chain has too many intermediaries: Typical supply chain looks like:- Manufacturer - National
distributor - Regional distributor - Local wholesaler - Retailer - Consumer. This implies that
global retail chains will have to build a supply chain network from scratch. This might run
foul with the existing supply chain operators. In addition to fragmented supply chain, the
trucking and transportation system is antiquated. The concept of container trucks,
automated warehousing is yet to take root in India. The result: significant
losses/damages during shipping.

Merchandising planning is one of the biggest challenges that any multi store retailer faces.
Getting the right mix of product, which is store specific across organization, is a combination
of customer insight, allocation and assortment techniques.

The private label will continue to compete with brand leaders. So supplier's brand wiil take
their own way because they have a established brand image from last decades and the
reasons can be attributed to better customer experience, value vs. price, aspiration,
innovation, accessibility of supplier's brand.

Strategies

Right Positioning

The effectiveness of the mall developer's communication of the offering to the target
customers determines how well the mall gets positioned in their minds. At this stage, the
communication has to be more of relative nature. This implies that the message conveyed
to the target customers must be effective enough in differentiating the mall's offering from
that of its competitors without even naming them. The message should also clearly convey
to the target audience that the mall offers them exactly what they call the complete
shopping-cum-entertainment point that meets all their expectations. The core purpose is to
inform the target customers about the offering of the mall, persuade them to visit the mall
and remind them about the mall. The mall developer can create awareness about the
offering among the target customers in a number of ways. Various communication tools
available to the mall developer for this purpose may include advertising, buzz marketing
(WoM), celebrity endorsement, use of print media, press releases and viral marketing .Once
the message is being conveyed through these channels, the mall developer must add a
personal touch to his message by carrying  out a door-to-door campaign in order to
reinforce the message.

Effective Visual Communication

Retailer has to give more emphasis on display visual merchandising, lighting, signages and
specialized props. The visual communication strategy might be planned and also be brand
positioned. Theme or lifestyle displays using stylized mannequins and props, which are
based on a season or an event, are used to promote collections and have to change to keep
touch with the trend. The merchandise presentation ought to be very creative and displays
are often on non-standard fixtures and forms to generate interest and add on attitude to the
merchandise.

Strong Supply Chain

Critical components of supply chain planning applications can help manufacturers meet
retailers' service levels and maintain profit margins. Retailer has to develop innovative
solution for managing the supply chain problems. Innovative solutions like performance
management,    frequent sales operation management, demand planning, inventory
planning, production planning, lean systems and staff should help retailers to get advantage
over competitors.

Changing the Perception

Retailers benefit only if consumers perceive their store brands to have consistent and
comparable quality and availability in relation to branded products.  Retailer has to provide
more assortments for private level brands to compete with supplier's brand. New product
development, aggressive retail mix as well as everyday low pricing strategy can be the
strategy to get edge over supplier's brand.

Conclusion:

In their preparation to face fierce competitive pressure, Indian retailers must come to
recognize the value of building their own stores as brands to reinforce their marketing
Positioning, to communicate quality as well as value for money. Sustainable competitive
advantage will be dependent on translating core values combining products, image and
reputation into a coherent retail brand strategy.
Top ten retail outlets in india
1.Pantaloon Retail:

It is headquartered in Mumbai with 450 stores across the country employing more than
18,000 people. It can boast of launching the first hypermarket Big Bazaar in India in 2001. An
all-India retail space of 5 million sq. ft. which is expected to reach 30 mn by 2010. It is not only
the largest retailer in India with a turnover of over Rs. 20 billion but is present across most retail
segments - Food & grocery (Big bazaar, Food bazaar), Home solutions (Hometown, furniture
bazaar, collection-i), consumer electronics (e-zone), shoes (shoe factory), Books: music & gifts
(Depot), Health & Beauty care services (Star, Sitara and Health village in the pipeline), e-tailing
(Futurbazaar.com), entertainment (Bowling co.)

2. K Raheja Group:

They forayed into retail with Shopper’s Stop, India’s first departmental store in 2001. It is
the only retailer from India to become a member of the prestigious Intercontinental Group of
Departmental Stores (IGDS). They have signed a 50:50 joint venture with the Nuance Group for
Airport Retailing. Shoppers Stop has 7, 52, 00 sq ft of retail space with a turnover of Rs 6.75
billion. The first Hypercity opened in Mumbai in 2006 with an area of 1, 20,000 sq. ft. clocking
gross sales of Rs. 1 bn in its first year.

3. Tata group:

Established in 1998, Trent - one of the subsidiaries of Tata Group - operates Westside, a
lifestyle retail chain and Star India Bazaar - a hypermarket with a large assortment of products at
the lowest prices. In 2005, it acquired Landmark, India's largest book and music retailer. Trent
has more than 4 lakh sq. ft. space across the country. Westside registered a turnover of Rs 3.58
mn in 2006. Tata’s has also formed a subsidiary named Infiniti retail which consists of Croma, a
consumer electronics chain. It is a 15000-17000 sq. ft. format with 8 stores as of September
2007.

4. RPG group:

One of the first entrants into organised food & grocery

retail with Foodworld stores in 1996 and then formed an alliance
with Dairy farm International and launched health & glow
(pharmacy & beauty care) outlets. Now the alliance has dissolved
and RPG has Spencer’s Hyper, Super, Daily and Express formats
and Music World stores across the country.RPG has 6 lakh sq. ft.
of retail space and has registered a turnover of Rs 4.5 billion in 2006. It is planning to venture
into books retail, with the launch of its own bookstores “Books and Beyond” by the end of 2007.
An IPO is also in the offering, with expansion to 450+ MusicWorld, 50+ Spencer's hyper outlets
covering 4 million sq. ft. by 2010.

5. Landmark group:

were launched in 1998 in India. Lifestyle is spread across six cities, covering 4.6 lakh sq.
ft. with a turnover of Rs 3.5 billion in 2005. A new division named Lifestyle International has
emerged for their international brands business comprising Bossino, Kappa and Springfield in
their portfolio.

Their retail mix includes Home solutions (Home centre), fashion (lifestyle, landmark
International), value retailing (max retail), hypermarkets & supermarkets (Max), kids
entertainment (Funcity).They plan to invest Rs. 300 crores in the next two years to expand on
Max chain, and Rs 100 crores on Citymax 3 star hotel chain. They have already instituted a
separate company christened Citymax Hotels (India).

6. Piramal Group

In September 1999, Piramal Enterprises announced their arrival into retail with the
launch of three retail concepts: India's first true shopping mall of international standards, called
Crossroads; a lifestyle department store named Piramyd Megastore; and a family entertainment
centre known as Jammin. Piramyd Megastore and Jammin were anchor tenants for Crossroads
(recently sold to Pantaloon for Rs 4 billion). In 2001, the group entered the business of food &
grocery retail with the launch of TruMart supermarkets in Pune.They have around 18 TruMart
stores covering 1.90 lakh sq. ft. registering a turnover of Rs 37.6 mn in 2005. Piraymd
Megatsore’s contributes more than 70 % to their retail mix with a turnover of Rs 112.8 mn. They
plan to open 150 stores covering 75 mn sq ft of retail space in the next 5 years.

7. Subhiksha

Subhiksha is a Chennai-based, decade old, no frills, food, grocery, pharma and telecom,
discount retail chain. ICICI Venture Capital holds 24% in the equity capital of Subhiksha. It has
more than 500 stores across the country covering a retail space of more than 1 million sq ft with
a registered turnover of Rs 3.34 bn in 2006. It has a planned investment of Rs.300 crores to ramp
up its operations to 1200 stores by 2008. New but potential BIG players

8. Bharti-Walmart

Their plans include US$ 7 bn investment in creating retail network in the country including 100
hypermarkets and several hundred small stores. They have signed a 50:50 percent joint venture
agreement with Walmart. Wal-Mart will do the cash & carry while Bharti will do the front-end.

9. Reliance
India’s most ambitious retail plans are by reliance, with investments to the tune of Rs. 30,000 cr
($ 6.67 bn) to set up multiple formats with expected sales of Rs 90,000 crores ($20 bn) by 2009-
10. There are already more than 300 Reliance Fresh stores and the first Reliance Mart Hypermart
has opened in Ahmedabad. The next ones are slated to open at Jamnagar, followed by marts in
Delhi / NCR, Hyderabad, Vijaywada, Pune and Ludhiana.

10. AV Birla Group

They have a strong presence in apparel retailing through Madura garments which is subsidiary of
Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd. They own brands like Louis Phillipe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Peter
England, Trouser town. In other segments of retail, AV Birla Group has announced investment
plans of Rs 8000 - 9000 crores in the first 3 years till 2010. The acquisition of Trinethra (food &
grocery) chain in the south has moved their tally to 400 stores in the country. Their “More” range
of 15 supermarkets are slated to open at Nashik, Pune and other tier II cities in Western India in
2007.