On My Personal Site
 

Retail Engagements

 

Retail markets have changed dramatically. Mobile customers, big box stores, and global markets challenge local retailers to stay competitive. It is essential for local businesses and business owners to  have information to maintain a competitive retail marketplace in your community.

 

Text Box: Providing customer service, offering high quality merchandise, and demonstrating community involvement could result in business success for small retailers. However, it was unknown whether these strategies would meet consumers’ expectations concerning local small retailers.

 

In order to co-exist with big box retailers, small retailers may increase customer traffic and sales by emphasizing the availability of high quality merchandise in stock and convenient customer services such as satisfaction guaranteed on product returns, effective handling of customer complaints, and knowledgeable sales associates.

 

Also, addressing store environment issues such as user friendly location of merchandise, store cleanliness, wide shopping aisles and public restrooms located close to the store may be beneficial for small retailers who are trying to differentiate themselves from large discount competitors.

 

Trade Area Capture

Information about a community's trade area can help officials assess the ability of local merchants to attract and capture the retail business of people in the area. The trade area capture (TAC) is an estimate of the number of people who shop in the local area during a certain period. The formula for calculating TAC is as follows: dividing the retail sales of a community by the average per capita retail spending by residents

 

Pull Factors

Determining the trade area is the first step in retail analysis. By knowing the trade area, you can determine the size and strength of local merchants in the market using pull factors. Pull factors are ratios that estimate the proportion of local sales that occurs in a town.

 

Pull factors are an easy way to determine retail leakage in the community. Subtracting one from the pull factor gives a crude estimate of retail loss. If the product is positive, then the community is attracting customers from outside the immediate trade area. If the product is negative, the community is losing customers to neighboring towns. A value of zero suggests the community is maintaining its customer base, neither attracting nor losing customers to competing communities.

 

The following will increase customer market knowledge and potential:

 

Here are some of the clients that have benefited from my understanding of retail dynamics.

 

 

Supervalu

North Vancouver

Web development for internet shopping. Customer retention is the maintenance of continuous trading relationships with customers over the long-term; it’s the mirror image of customer defection or churn.

Customer retention has replaced customer acquisition as the most important marketing KPI, particularly in mature markets, like this company was operating within.

 

 

JJ Fashions

Yellowknife

Customer retention program was instituted. It was focused buying for specific client groups. Newsletters were published weekly to bring merchandise to the attention of targeted customers. I  made sure they did not bore their customers with regular issues of nonsense by getting some of the regulars to contribute. (avoided being repetitive). Regular Follow Up Calls to customers with either issues or special requests.. These calls were made to identify with the customers; find out how they were doing , asking for advice on product categories..

 

 

Cumming Nicholson

Midlands

Asset turnover and a close out sale. The community had changed and the buying profiles had changed over time. The customer lists were updated and the campaign was started to bring more traffic into the store through targeted sales and contests used to build customer lists.

The close out sale was very successful and was extended through the summer as the owners had been able to purchase some discontinued stock and offer it at significant savings to the local customer base. We ended up with over 1200 names on the list that were part of the campaign.

 

Stedman’s Stores

Desoronto, Ont

Asset turnover was poor because of the big box stores opening in the larger communities. The product mix was an assortment of purchases that were no longer current but older low value customers were an issue. The product lines were too broad and there was no plan to invest in high value merchandise. I this case the store closing was not as successful as others. The attempt at developing a campaign list was only partially successful. This was a very low income community and couldn’t be served with the types of merchandise available to the franchisees.

 

Stedman’s Stores

Napanee, ON

The management needed to engage in an Inventory liquidation of old and static product lines. The end result of the program ended up in store closing.

Customer development had not been developed, so I still recommend they use earning-and-reward programs built on the old purchase-aggregate model. We considered a wide range of options before launching a program. These options include: Earning points toward rewards or free or discounted merchandise. Using third-party partner currencies for retail purchases. Offering rebates or discounts for using a internal discount card. Providing information that was relevant, valuable and exclusive to all the people on the distribution list. Allowing members access to products, services and experience prior to release to the public. Recognizing best customers with "elite status."

 

 

BC Liquor Stores

North Vancouver

System software implementation of the Inventory management program newly developed to improve the response and procurement of different product lines. The program streamlines the turnaround time of ordering and order fulfillment in the store system.. Plano gram development and implementation in the different management catchment areas can now be implemented more effectively for community profiles..

 

Just Janet’s

Nipewan Saskatchewan

In this case I pointed out to the owners that a high raw customer retention rate does not always signal excellent customer retention performance. This is because customer defection rates vary across groups and types of customers. Defection rates tend to be much higher for newer customers than longer tenure customers. Over time, as you mutually demonstrate commitment, trust grows and it becomes progressively more difficult to break the relationship. Successful customer acquisition programs could produce the effect of a high customer defection rate, simply because new customers are more likely to defect, but is an additional way to begin to add the more lucrative long term customer.