Retail Buying

Harper Adams University College
And
Beijing University of Agriculture

Food Quality and Retail Management

Module Title: Retail Buying

Assignment Title: The application of modern management concepts to Retail Buying and their use in developing a Competitive Advantage.

Module Tutor: Richard Taylor HAUCID: 11221900

Year 3

Date: 10th December 2013

Word Count: 2485 without references
Content

Summary
In today’s highly competitive markets retailers evaluate all opportunities and possibilities to present the right product at the right price with the right promotional support in the right place. Category Management (CM), Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) and Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) are concepts that have been embraced by Retail Buyers and Retail Buying. To begin with, CM is a retailing concept to help retailers increased value to the end consumer and then increase customer loyalty, and it is also belong to ECR; ECR is managerial approach which helps retailers and suppliers to implement more efficiency, and CRM is a strategic concept used by retailers and suppliers to gain a mass of data about consumers. Even though they all have own benefits, they still have limitations. For instance, CM is difficult to apply only by retailers; ECR must grasp consumers’ expectation very accurately and CRM is a kind of investment with high costs and risks. Therefore, it is better to apply them three together.
1.0 Introduction
In recent years, business competition has been more serious and information exchange has become more significant. Modern management concepts play an important role for retail buying. The aim of this report is to introduce performance of Category Management (CM), Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) and Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy. It is divided into two major sections. To begin with, section one will critically assess the strategic importance of these concepts for both large retailing

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