4 Types of Retail Merchandising in Retailing

Retail merchandise is generally categorized into four different types, or classes. Chances are, as a retailer, you specialize in one of these four classes. But you needn’t merchandise your store only with one type of product. One way to increase your sales and be more competitive is to stock merchandise from each of these four categories.
- Shopping Products – Shopping products make up the bulk of retail merchandise. These are the items that consumers want and will spend considerable time researching, testing, and comparing to ensure they find the brand and the model that will make them the happiest. Shopping products can be categorized as consumer products or business products. These easy categorizations simply mean that they are generally in demand among one audience or the other–consumers or businesses.
- Convenience Products – While shopping products may make up the bulk of your inventory, you should also include other types of merchandise. One type of merchandise you should carry falls into the convenience products class. Items such as food, hygiene products, cleaning supplies, etc. fall into this category. These are products customers can’t live without and the type they’ll make a special trip for when items are close to depletion. To increase your revenues, make sure you include convenience products that complement your shopping products merchandise.
- Impulse Products – Impulse products are items that people buy as unplanned purchases such as magazines, candy and sodas, or health food snacks. These items are usually placed near checkout counters usually enticing a customer to purchase a product without any “valid” reason.
- Specialty Products – If you operate a specialty retail store, chances are you’ll stock a lot unique and individualized products rather than having “everything” like big-box type of retailers. It will be your primary type of merchandise. therefore try to choose specialty products that complement your typical inventory and customers.
Merchandising is all about choosing the right products to sell and displaying them in a way that entice and to some extent, engage the customer in order to sell more units. With the right product strategy and retail merchandising software, you can increase your retail sales, revenues, and profits.