The role of sales and service functioning in retailing

Completive factor in retail environment

Retailers have very important role in sales and servicing. Retailers help to maximize the business and also help to determine the profit of the organization. The taste and the preference of the business organization can be known through the retailers. To know the needs and demands of the customer is the main responsibility of the retailer. Retailer can also be known as the middleman who stays in between the business organization and the customer. The retailers should always be aware about the demand of the customer. The retail industry can be influenced by different kind of government policy. The retailer should be well known to every taste of people and should insist people to change their choice if in case they find it bad. Retailers should be able to make things easy for the customer. The retailer should always look for the long term profit and pay all the dues, tax of the government ever time. There should always be fixed marked price, selling price and discount rates in a correct order.

STEMCOR- steel Marketing Corporation is the company based in London, United Kingdom. The company has 145 business units in 45 different countries of the world.  The company is the largest steel trader of the world and is the third largest private company of United Kingdom. The company does not own any of the steel but it supplies the steel to the market by buying the steel from the producers. The companies have provided employment to more than two thousand people all over. Excellent marketing strategy and good internal management have provided the company the best opportunity to stay ahead in the competitive market.  

Significance and needs of retail industry

Focusing on customer service
The retail industry provides various ranges of goods and products. They also have the link and coordination with large number of suppliers. This type of retail industry helps to resolve from the economic crisis as they keep the materials in the stock. They store the goods and use it only in the time when customer wants it. To provide the goods and services to people in large quantity it is very challenging task. As large scale industries produce large quantity of goods the retail industry can store the excess goods and help them to utilize at the time of crisis. It is very important for the organization or the industry to provide all the information to the retailer it is because retailer deals directly with the people or customer. The retailer should have all the taste and experience about the goods because the retailer deals directly with costumer and the retailer will be able to convince the people properly. If all are done properly then the distribution of goods to all the channels from organization will run properly. For an organization to succeed it mainly depends upon the retailer. Retailer holds the prior information of each and every product. Good customers should be focused properly and the retailer should respect their loyalty toward the product. The retailer should not show heavy or bad attitude towards the customer. The retailer should be able to impress and keep the customer satisfied. The more customers are satisfied retailer keeps on profiting. If the customer is satisfied the positive message goes to the relatives, family and friends. Then the number of customer will increase more. As for every retailer the first priority should be given to satisfy the customer. The negativity of retailer toward the customer may cost him a lot. The loyal customer will help to profit in the business. The nature of the retailer determines either the business goes into success or fails. Each and every customer should be given equal priority. The loss of even a single customer may cost a lot. If retailer provides the poor service then the customer may never shop there and the retailer may pay a bigger price. The retailer should always have positive and good attitude toward each and every customers. The retailer should be able to describe about all the goods in an easy way. The more fluent and simple retailer becomes while speaking and at attitude the more people prefer that retailer. The customer responds to the retailer by observing his attitude. Each and every member working in the retail industry should always have the positive attitude toward customer. The retailer should learn to pay more respect and value to the customer who is loyal to the goods. The retailer should not show any suspecting attitude in front of customer. The more retailer becomes faithful the more retailer progress.

The important aspect of retail industry is a good customer service. The business analysis can be done by taking the feedback of the customer who uses that product. This helps the retailer to know the economic condition of that business. The retailer should always be fair with the price of the product. The retailer should always provide the reasonable price for goods. The customer chooses to prefer the retailer who tries to offer the best price in that area. Any kind of change in price or any mischievous conducted at the price rate may cost the retailer. As a result the retailer may lose heavy number of customers. Fair and reasonable price is the main reason to attract the customer. The more retailers become fair with the price the more number of customer increases. The fair price helps the retailer to earn the trust of the people. People mostly want the material with good quality at reasonable price. Higher the price the retailer gets lower customer. In order to attract existing as well as other customers the main thing that retailer must do is provide the best product in a reasonable price or fair amount.

Structure of retail sector

Organization and structure of retail sector:

Retailing is considered as the sale of goods or commodity in a small quantity to customer. It is simply the process where the customer gets the goods as per their demand and the retailers provide it to them. Retailing simply is an intermediate guide or distributor between an Organization and Customer. The goods firstly produced by the organization or industry are made through different series of process. That product after the finalization then is given to the wholesaler and wholesaler provides it to the retailer. In some cases the organization provides the product directly to the retailer. Retailer has direct approach with the people or customer. As per the demand of people the retailer gets the goods or products from organization and sells it to the customer. In UK the retail industry covers all the business that sells goods and provides good service to the customer. The main organization consist of lots of branches and these branches may be divided into further sub-branches and provide the goods in different part of the county. The final branch may be in the form of store. In UK the retail industry employs over ten percent workforce in total workforce of the country. Annually it adds the contribution of 17.5 billion pound to the entire UK economy.

The size of the organization also determines the pattern of retail industry. Bigger organization produces the goods in larger quantity and the aims or goals of this organization are high. As this organization has to gain lot of profit its organization will be different than other small one.  Bigger organization usually gives their goods to wholesaler and the wholesaler provides it to retailer and finally it reaches to the customer. If the production is large then it reaches to the wholesaler. If the production is low then the goods directly goes to the retailer. The sales of the organizations depend upon the retailer as retailer has the upper hand to know all the queries of the customer and promote the product.

Methods of distributing goods to different branches from the manufacturing organization to the customer:

Each and every organization needs a proper plan to distribute their products in the market. The organization should be able to satisfy their targeted customer. Most of the business industries sell their goods through the retailer. This is also known as the distributing channels. The products prepared by business organization have to go through different stage and processes before it reaches to the customer. All the error has to be solved out before the goods reaches to the customer. Most of the large business organization decides to sell their product through the wholesaler. It is because the number of products or goods manufactured by the company is in large scale and to store it the wholesaler is required. Then the wholesaler provides it to retailer and through retailer it goes to the customer who demanded that product. The other way is when business organization supplies its goods or product to the retailer and retailer provides it to the customer. In this process there is no wholesaler. It is considered as the effective way of selling since it do not involve the wholesaler the retailer can directly communicate with the customer and tell their feedbacks to the organization. The final way is organization selling its product directly to the customer. Here there is the direct communication between the members of the organization and the customer there is no any presence of the wholesaler and the retailer. The retailer plays an important role to promote and publish the business. However in most of the cases it has been found that the wholesaler sell the product to retailer in certain amount and when the same amount reaches to customer then it becomes more costly. Some people therefore try to contact and deal directly with the wholesaler. For some they find dealing with the product straight from the organization more trustworthy then others.

The distribution of the products or goods and services are shown in the figure below:                                           

It may be a challenge to supply the product from the organization. The diagram above represents the methods how the business organization sell their products to customers by using different branch. The manufacturing organization supplying it’s good directly to the customer. This type of method is generally used by the small industry. The industry or small organization produces fewer amounts of goods which can easily be sold into the local market and they earn the profit. Larger industries mostly do not relay on this technique. Larger industries or organization mostly give their products to the wholesaler and the wholesaler to the retailer. However besides the larger scale industries and small scale industries there are medium scale industries or the medium scale organization which distribute their products to the retailer and retailer then provides it to the customer. The final and ultimate goal of every producer or producing organization is customer. The retailer plays an important role to convince the customer. Some customer is loyal to the products which they buy each and every day. It is the work of retailer to keep them satisfied and happy with that product. The negativity of the retailer may lead to the downfall of the product. The organization can use any path or branch to sell their products. It mostly depends upon the size and economic rate of the organization. There is no any compulsion that all the organization has to use the same way to sell their goods or products.  The simplest way of selling the goods is the straight sell through the producer to the customer.

Plan to carryout support

Time and resource planning

Planning is the first step to the success. For the achievement of any goal it should be planned in advance. For carrying out support role in the organization it is necessary to make plan with adequate information received form research and all the resource available to implement the plan.  For the performance of support making action plan is extremely important. The first job to perform during plan for the support role is the selection of the staff. Only people who are skilled and eligible for the support role should be selected for the support role. The next thing that should be considered after selection of the staff is the structure of the organization. Every organization is unique in its own way. Staff should be provided training and development. It is impossible carryout support role in the organization if the plan is not set prior.  Plan gives direction to any job so it is necessary to make plan.

Plan for the support role should be done in the proper plan. Plan in the right time helps to boost the organizational performance and if not the organization have to bear loss and have to face difficulty in the operation. Planning is like a road map to the success. Plan helps to reach the goal very easily. Early planning of the support helps to identify the area that need support the most. The best time for planning for the support is when the activities are to be performed in the organization. The resource required in the planning of the support roles includes all the resource that is required for making the action plan. The resource required of the planning support plan usually includes information received from the different department, human resource and so on.  Human resource and their skills is most important resource for the support role.  Proper plan in the right time and adequate resource helps in good support role that ultimately help in the success of the organization.

Procedure and policy in support of activities

There are different kinds of procedures for the implementation of the action plan in the supporting role. It is necessary to implement the plan for the success of it. The following step needs to be followed when implementing the plan.

Identifying the area: The needs for support in particular area should be identified. When making plan for the support role it is the first job of a planner to identify which area requires maximum support and plan should be made on the basis of concerned functional area.

Gathering necessary information: the next step after selecting the area is to gather enough information of related functional area. Gathered information helps to find out about the actual problem that have raised in the area.

Assigning reliable person for support role: everyone is not qualified for providing the support role. Only those people should be assigned for support role that have enough knowledge and experience in the sector where the support is needed.

Approving and implementing: the final process is the approving and implementing the action plan. Before implementation it is necessary for the approval of the plan. Plan cannot be implemented without approval. When approval of plan is done then the plan can finally be implemented. After implementation of the plan,feedback should be taken.

Reviewing support service

Effectiveness in support roles

The objective and goal of the organization keeps on changing time to time. The requirement of the support also changes with the change of goal of the organization. Reviewing of the support activities is extremely important to keep up with the organization. Review of the support helps to find out the current requirement of the organization and helps in the correction of the support plan. Review is always conducted in certain time frame and the outcome of the review helps to modify the support service as it is required. The additional support requirement of the organization is known with the help of review.

River Island is one of the leading private companies in United Kingdom. It is a high street fashion brand that operates in worldwide markets.  The company has total 317 stores all over UK. It is the fashion retailing company. The company is committed to provide service to the customer. The effectiveness of support in the company is providing better business environment and the ability to expand in the international market. In addition to that the company is constantly providing motivation to its customer and encouraging them to do their work efficiently. Support task in the company have provided favorable condition to perform the job and have maintained proper coordination in the work place.