Whilst many retailers have certainly come a long way in developing their commercial knowledge and practices; there are many that still seem to think of themselves as being nothing more than a “trader” – i.e. a business that chooses to just (or mainly) focus on buying a product at a wholesale price, putting a profit margin on it and selling it a retail price.
This “trader” mentality must evolve, for instead retailers to see themselves as “all rounder” business people – people who easily move between putting their marketing hat on, their HR hat on, their financial management hat on…and all of the other hats that necessarily must be on the head of particularly a SME scale retail business owner’s head.
Remember this ?
Allocation of SME Business Owner Time & Energy
Where prioritisation of commercial decisions is concerned I’d like to see less emphasis placed on stock buying/ mix decisions and more emphasis (time/ energy/ budget) placed on marketing. If you are devoting most of your thought time to stock purchasing decisions, you are in fact a “production-driven” business. You are fundamentally “pushing” product at customers.
Whereas if you were more “marketing-led” you would experience the market “pulling” product from your business – the market would be influencing your stock purchasing decisions mostly versus your own intuitive judgement as to what you “think” customers’ wants/ needs are.
So power-up your marketing creativity and formulate a schedule of marketing activity (digital and non-digital) for say 6 months ahead that will serve to “pull” people towards your business and your products/ services. Remember, prospective/ target customers will only commit to buy from your business when/ where they can clearly perceive that your products/ services will meet their specific needs. “Product-driven” businesses often incur a high level of “product wastage” (i.e. stock carry risk) in their “hit-miss” approach; whereas “marketing-led” businesses typically enjoy greater returns on their stock investment through being more targeted and due to being willing to match their value proposition as closely as possible to the validated needs of target customers. The latter is in fact a behavioural science; whereas being “production-driven” is a very much a “shot gun” approach.