Retail Communication Mix

Communication program to develop brands and build customer

loyalty
 Brand is a distinguishing name, symbol, logo, that identifies the
product or service offered by the seller and differentiates those
products and services from the offerings of the competitors

 Value of Brand Image

 Building a Brand Equity
 Brand Awareness
 Association
 Extending the Brand name
 Retail Communication Mix
Methods of Communicating with the Customers
 Paid impersonal communication
Advertising
Sales Promotion
Contests
Coupons
Store Atmosphere
Website
 Paid personal communication
Personal selling
E-mail
 unpaid personal communication
Publicity
 Retail Communication Mix
Planning the Retail communication process
 Setting objectives
 Setting the Communication budget
 Allocation of the Promotional budget
 Planning, Implementing and Evaluating communication programs
Choosing the most effective media
 Newspapers, Magazines, Direct Mail
 Television, Radio, Internet
 Outdoor billboard, Shopping guides, yellow pages
Factors considered for selecting the media
 Coverage, Reach, CPM
 Frequency, timing, costs, etc.
 Promotional Strategy
Steps involved in Retail Advertising Campaigns

 Selecting Advertising Objectives

 Advertising Budget for Campaign
 Designing advertising message
Selection of media
 Running and Ad. Campaign
 Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
 Promotional Strategy
Objectives of Sales Promotion
 Stop and Shop
 Shop and Buy
 Buy Bigger
 Repeat Purchase

Supplier originated Sales Promotion

 In store Activities
Price of Pack, Premiums, Self liquidating premiums, Personality
promotions, Competitions, Co-operative Promotions, Sampling,
Coupons, Buy one get one free, Multi-packs, In store sales person,
point of purchase display material
 Promotional Strategy
Objectives of Personal Selling
 Persuade Customers to purchase
 Stimulate sales of impulse items or products related to a consumer’
basic purchase
 Complete transaction with customers
 Provide adequate level of customer services and maintain customer
satisfaction

Types of Publicity
 Planned public Relation
 Unexpected publicity
 Complementary Publicity
 Retail Human Resource Management
Objectives of the Human Resource Management
 Objective of HRM is to align the capabilities and behaviour of
employee with the short term and long term goals of the retail firms

Employee
Turnover 100 x no.of people in set of position during a year – 100
= -------------------------------------------------------------------
No.of Positions

 Employee Retailers sales / Profits

Productivity = --------------------------------------------
No. of Employees
 Retail Human Resource Management

The Human Resource Triad

HR Professionals
Line Managers
Employees
Special HR Conditions facing Retailers
 Part time employee
 Expense Control
 Employee Demographics
Organization Design Considerations
 Specialization
 Responsibility and authority
 Reporting Relationship
 Matching organization structure to retail strategy
 Retail Human Resource Management

Downward Performance Triad

Financial Performance Problems (Low profits / High Costs)

Retailers Response (Layoffs, freeze on hiring & promotions, reduced

training, salary freeze, greater use of part time employees and more
outsourcing)

Employee Response (Decreased motivation and efforts, Poor customer

service, lower job satisfaction, greater turnover)
 Retail Human Resource Management

Retail Organization design Issues

 Centralization Vs Decentralization
 Coordinating Merchandise and Store Management

Motivating Retail Employees

 Policies and Supervision
 Incentives
 Organization Culture

Building Employee Commitment

 Developing Skills
 Empowering employees
 Creating partnership relationship
 Retail Human Resource Management

Trends in Retail Human Resource Management

 Managing Diversity – Training, support groups and mentoring

programs, career development and promotions

 Legal and Regulatory Issues – Equal employment opportunity,

Compensation, Labour relations, Employee safety and health,
employee privacy, developing policies

 Use of Technology
 Customer Service

It is set of activities and programs undertaken by retailers to make

the shopping experience more rewarding for their customers

 These activities increase the value customer receive from the

merchandize and services they purchase

 All employees of a retail firm and all elements of the retailing mix
provide services that increase the value of merchandize
 Customer Service
Customer Service Strategies
 Customization Approach
 Standardization Approach
 Cost of Customer Service

Customer Evaluation of Service Quality

 Role of Expectations
 Perceived Service
 The GAP Model
The Gap model indicates what retailers need to do to provide high
quality customer service

When customer expectations are greater than their perceptions of the

delivered service, customers are dissatisfied and feel the quality of
retailers service is poor
Retailers thus need to reduce the service gap I.e. the difference
between the customer expectation and perception of customer service

Factors affecting the Service Gap

 Knowledge Gap
 Standard Gap
 Delivery Gap
 Communication Gap
 Service Recovery
 Listening to Customers

 Providing a fair solution: Distributive fairness, procedural fairness

 Resolving Problem quickly: Giving clear instructions, Speaking the

customer language
 Customer Relationship Management
 It relates to the activities undertaken by the retailer to build long
term mutually profitable relationship with the customer

 Customers are provided with loyalty cards or redeemable coupons,

etc.

 Regular contact is maintained with the customer updating him the

information related to the new arrivals, special schemes, discounts,
etc.

 Any customer query, complaint is immediately attended or resolved

 If possible, product adaptations are also done to suit the specific

requirement of the customer
 Customer Relationship Management

 CRM is a business philosophy and set of strategies, programs and

systems that focuses on identifying and building loyalty with a
retailer’s most valued customers

 CRM is based on the philosophy that retailers can increase their

profitability by building relationships with their better customers

 The basic purpose is to develop a base of loyal customers who

patronize the retailer frequently

 Through CRM activities, retailers provide more value to their best

customers using targeted promotions and services to increase their
share of wallet I.e. the percentage of the customer purchases made
from the retailer
 Customer Relationship Management

Customer Loyalty
In context of retailer, it means that customers are committed to
purchasing merchandise and services from the retailer and will resist
the activities of competitors attempting to attract their patronage

Loyal customers have an emotional connection with the retailer. It

develops when customers receive personal attention from the retailer

CRM Process : It involves following activities

 Collecting customer Data
 Analyzing the customer data and identifying the target customers
 Developing CRM programs
 Implementing CRM programs
 Customer Relationship Management

Customer database / Data warehouse

It contains all of the data the firm has collected

It contains the following information

Transactions
Customer contacts
Customer preferences
Descriptive information
Responses to marketing activities
 Customer Relationship Management

Data Mining
It is a technique used to identify patterns in data.

The process includes analyzing the customer database and converting

the data into information that will help retailers develop programs for
building customer loyalty

Lifetime customer Value is the expected contribution from the

customer to the retailer’s profits over his or her entire relationship
with the retailer

RFM analysis referred to as Recency, Frequency and Monetary

analysis
 Customer Relationship Management

Customer Retention : Approaches taken by the Retailers;

 Frequent Shopping programs

 Special Customer service
 Personalization
 Community

Cross Selling is selling a complementary product or service in a

specific transaction such as selling a customer printer along with the
PC

Up Selling refers to selling the premium priced or higher quality

products to the existing customers. It refers to enhancing the
aspirations of the customers