More than 218 million mobile apps were downloaded in 2020 alone. Since then, many millions more mobile apps have hit the market, and millions more people have downloaded them. But apps are more than just brief distractions and entertainment.
Some apps are very important for retail merchandising, retail execution, and other similar fields. If you’re a wholesaler distributor, you might be wondering how you can upgrade your retail merchandising. After all, many retail establishments have been left behind in terms of technology and merchandising in general.
But when you use mobile in the realm of retail merchandising, you will find that you can completely change how it all works. But where should you start and what are the benefits of using mobile for all this in the first place? Keep reading and learn more about it as well as the benefits it has to offer.
What You Need to Know About Retail Merchandising
Before we dive into the details and benefits of using mobile in retail merchandising, it is first important to ask the question: What is retail merchandising? You may have heard of this concept before, but you may not know exactly what it is. Fortunately, this concept isn’t as complicated as it sounds and, in fact, it is quite straightforward.
It mainly has to do with the appearance of retail products, how they are organized, and how they appeal to the customers who see them. As a wholesale distributor, you might not think that the appearance and organization of certain products are all that important to their sale.
After all, isn’t it more important to make sure that the products are high-quality and do what they’re supposed to do?
While the functionality and quality of certain products are indeed important, these factors are not the only things that you should consider. As it turns out, the appearance and organization of retail products have a great impact on how potential customers perceive those products and how likely those products are to sell.
This is not all that surprising since people are very visual, and it is important to make sure that products make a good first impression.
The Details
For example, suppose that you have a variety of high-quality products in a retail store. However, these products are displayed in a messy and unattractive way.
This simple lack of organization will make people less interested in those products. More importantly, people will be less likely to buy those products simply because they don’t look good. But when you rearrange the products in a more pleasing form, this new design choice may inspire potential customers to make a purchase.
This may all seem too simple to work, but it certainly does work. This is the foundation of retail merchandising. The art of selling products is to make sure those products look good.
And the products should function well too. As long as products have all that, they should sell out in no time. But how exactly does the use of mobile fit in?
More importantly, what is retail execution and how does it work in terms of retail merchandising?
What You Need to Know About Retail Execution
In this retail merchandising guide, you already know what merchandising is and you likely have heard of it before, but what about retail execution? You may not have heard of this particular concept before because it is quite new. But just because it is relatively new doesn’t mean that it isn’t worthwhile.
On the contrary, retail execution has proven itself to be just as important as retail merchandising, if not more so. But what is it and why is it so important for the realm of retail business and wholesale distribution? To start, this concept is ideal for optimizing selling decisions as well as keeping track of factors that influence those decisions.
There are many factors that come into play in the retail industry. For example, some products might go out of stock, some assets might be hard to get a hold of, and other assets might be disorganized in an unhelpful way. All of these factors together can get quite overwhelming.
As a distributor engaging in retail merchandising, the last thing you want to do is deal with a whole lot of chaos and disorganization. Unfortunately, this is often how things go because the retail system is usually not organized in a helpful way.
If your retail merchandising and organization aren’t up to par, you will find yourself losing business, and this is the last thing you want. But again, the power of retail execution can help. This model can help you gain better control over these various retail factors.
Understanding the Process
Most importantly, retail execution can make it easier for you to organize different assets and aspects so that your retail merchandising system won’t fall into chaos. In a way, you can think of retail execution as a sort of scaffolding that holds everything up and keeps it in place.
That way, the entire system can run much more smoothly and efficiently. Retail execution can even allow you to keep track of individual products. For example, if a store happens to run out of a certain brand of baking products, your retail execution system will be able to let you know.
From there, you can order more of the same products to replace the ones that have gone out of stock. That way, you can make sure that the retail store in question is always stocked and ready to supply customers with whatever they happen to require. You can also keep track of factors that directly influence a potential customer’s buying decisions.
As mentioned before, the more appealing products are to customers, the more likely customers will be to buy those products.
In short, retail execution is an amazing and arguably essential concept to employ. But if you were to start using retail execution, how would you go about using it?
Using Mobile in Retail Merchandising
You might be wondering what kind of role mobile plays in retail merchandising and retail execution. In the past, mobile didn’t really have much of a role at all in these two concepts. Today, however, mobile is pretty much an indispensable part of both of these aspects.
But how and why, you might ask? First, let’s consider the concept of CRM, also known as customer relationship management. Managing the relationship between the retail power and its customers is very important.
The more connected customers feel toward a particular retail business, the more comfortable and loyal those customers will be.
This will make the customers more likely to shop at that store in the future rather than going to a competitor. On the other hand, if customers have a bad relationship with a particular store, they will not be very likely to come back in the future or tell their friends and family about the store.
CRM is a type of software that aims to improve customer relationships, and this technology is often mobile. Besides that, retail execution is also very mobile. You can see this for yourself through the use of apps and similar technology to bring CRM and retail execution into the spotlight.
But why should you bother with mobile in the first place? Isn’t it easier to use more traditional techniques to manage all this? Not necessarily.
When you’re out and about, you certainly can’t drag a bunch of things with you. But when you use a mobile device such as a phone, for example, and you secure that phone with the right software or apps, you will find that it will be easier and more convenient than ever to keep track of everything that you need.
What You Need to Know
Consider apps for retail execution, for example. As mentioned before, retail execution is all about keeping track of even the smallest details in the retail world. A simple mobile app is perfect for monitoring this information for yourself without getting confused or overwhelmed.
This is because such an app is designed to be as streamlined and modern as possible so that it is easy to use and understand. After all, no one wants to deal with an app that is complicated or tricky to use. When you use an app for retail execution, you’ll find that you’ll be able to keep track of more things than you ever have been able to before.
For example, you can keep track of the prices for different times, what amount of money items sell for on average, how often certain products sell, and so on. You’ll also be able to keep track of information such as similar items that customers bought after buying a particular item or how many times customers decided to buy a particular product.
Breaking Down the Information
While all of this information might seem minuscule and unimportant, in the grand scheme of things, it will give you a much better idea of how customers function in a given retail environment. A good retail execution and merchandising app can then turn that information into helpful analytics to show you what techniques are effective and which are not.
Narrowing down information like this can allow you to optimize the retail process like never before. As a wholesale distributor engaging in the realm of retail merchandising, you would never have to deal with common problems of disorganization and chaos again. Instead, a simple mobile app could simplify everything, tell you exactly what’s wrong, and then tell you how to fix it.
What else could you want from your mobile device?
Other Benefits and Uses of Mobile in Retail Merchandising
By now, you have seen some of the basic benefits of using mobile in the world of retail merchandising and execution. But what other benefits can you hope to experience if you decided to use mobile for this purpose? One of the main benefits is sheer convenience.
These days, everyone has their phone on them at all times. Turning your phone (or another mobile device) into a powerful tool for retail merchandising only makes sense for a wholesale distributor.
Instead of having all of your important sales information on your computer, written down on a piece of paper, or otherwise, you can have everything you need in the palm of your hand right on your phone.
That way, you can examine all sorts of important data when you’re out and about, whether you’re walking down the street, at home, at work, or anywhere else. If you happen to have an idea or suddenly want to check up on some data, you won’t have to wait. All you have to do is pull out your phone and everything you could ever want is already there waiting for you.
This is not to mention that such an app makes retail organizations easier than ever. You can keep track of payments, sales, sale frequency, and more. From there, you can change certain factors to influence sales and productivity so that your retail merchandising strategy is completely optimized.
All About Mobile in Retail Merchandising
Retail merchandising is all about keeping things organized and attractive so that people will be more likely to buy those products. Using mobile for retail merchandising and execution is a sure way to optimize the entire process and make sure that your distribution is a success.
To learn more about how it all works, contact us here.