Retailers’ success largely depends on their sales merchandising strategies. Merchandising has a direct impact on the customers’ buying intent. Retailers reach their sales goals by employing effective in-store merchandising ideas. Whether you own a brick-and-mortar business or an ecommerce store, retailers use different merchandising techniques to arrange the products, communicate the brand message and value, and create a wholesome shopping experience for the customers.
What is Meant by Category Sales?
In a retail setting, the range of products sold are broken down into discrete groups called product categories. For example, food and beverages, toiletries, kitchen essentials, etc. Category sales is a systematic approach to manage each product category as a separate business unit. Every category has a distinct set of turnover, profit margins, and sales strategies.
Category sales approach is ideal to serve a complex customer base who have different needs. An effective sales merchandising plan can help you stay relevant in a competitive business environment. For instance, when you introduce a new brand or product in store, you can direct increased traffic towards a particular category.
Determine what is your goal- whether it is increasing traffic, accelerating sales, category growth, or challenging the competition. According to your goal you can emphasize category merchandising company strategies such as product placements, offering customer incentives, advertising, etc. Ensure that these efforts are measurable.
Below are proven merchandising strategies that increase category sales:
Build Traffic:
The intention of this strategy is to drive traffic to the store, lead them to the aisle and to the category of products you want to sell. This strategy can be employed for frequently purchased items, or price sensitive products. Ideally, you must display the best-selling products in a place that is more visible and accessible in your store.
Create Excitement:
When you intend to target impulse buyers, this strategy works best! It involves creating excitement around a specific category of products by introducing some kind of urgency or a golden opportunity for its consumers. No matter if you are part of the planning team or not, a custom print t-shirt with a theme and fun design is a great idea. As everyone will have a memento of the event you are planning, using dye sublimation printers to print the graphic design onto tees will spark excitement. Excitement strategy is employed around fashion and lifestyle products, innovative items and promotions like season specials, limited offer, etc.
Enhance the Store Image:
Retailers must create an appealing store image in the minds of the consumers. This can be done by providing ultimate quality products in a wide range of variety at the best prices along with great service, presentation, on-point delivery, etc.
Turf Defending:
To maintain and safeguard the market share against competitors in the market, the turf defending strategy is employed. It consists of aggressive pricing and promotional strategies. The strategy can create a positive price image overall.
Increase Cash Flow:
The intention is to increase the average category transaction. Merchandising has to be done in a way that encourages customers to buy more by adding complementary products to the cart. For instance, if the customer needs bread, they can also buy jam, butter, and other bread spreads to complement it.
Generating Maximum Profits:
While merchandising at retail merchandising stores, ensure that products with a higher profit margin are displayed at a “hot spot”, i.e., a noticeable and appealing spot that grabs all attention. To generate max profits, complementary products like accessories for the primary product are pushed for sale.