At the beginning of the 21st century, retailing has experienced a significant change due to the increase of competition strategies.
This report will illustrate the traditional concept of retailing and introduce three new kinds of retail forms and combination's that has emerged, which includes co-branding retailing, limited time only stores and retail entertainment in the global market.
RETAILING
Retail, in the traditional sense includes all the activities in selling goods or services directly to final consumers for personal and non-business use. This includes any organisation selling to final consumers, whether it is a manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer. (Kotler.P, et al 2009)
The major types of retailer we are familiar with in today's society includes specialty stores which sells narrow product lines, example include The body shop. Department store, selling several product lines, this includes Myer, David Jones; Supermarket which sells large low-cost, low-margin, high-volume, self-service store designed to meet total needs for food and household products; convenience store, which are generally opened in residential areas for 24 hours a day seven days a week with limited line of high-turnover convenience products, famous example would be 7-eleven; Discount stores which offer standard of specialty merchandiese at low-price, low-margin, high-volume stores, an example includes BigW, Target; Off-price retailer that offers leftover goods, factory outlets, independent off-price retailers, an example includes Direct Factory Outlet (DFO); superstores, which occupies large selling space, which could be either category killers like Bunnings and Officeworks, or hypermarkets such as Carrerfour and Costco; lastly there is catalogue showroom where a broad selection of high-mar-up fast moving brand named goods are sold by catalogue at discount, with customers picking up the merchandise at the stores, an example includes the bike shop in the US.
Retailers