Week 5 - Merchandise Management

Merchandise Category is an assortment of items that customer see as subsitutes for each other. It is the basic unit of making merchandise management decision.

The Body Shop practices Merchandise Category too, as quoted from Ms Karen Tay, The Body Shop (Paragon Outlet) Shop Manager. Just a little more information about Ms Karen Tay, She is one of the most successful Shop Manager I've ever met. She joined The Body Shop since 1991, till now, it's almost 20 years. Just last year, she had received her 15 years service award issued by the company
and earlier that year, she also received her certificate upon completion of the diploma course sponsored by the company.

Here's a picture of Karen and i while she guides me along.

Karen explained that The Body Shop's categorize their products according to the uses as well as the scent.

From left to right, we could see that the daily body care were arranged nicely according to their:

1st - scent
For example, passion fruit shower gel (purple in colour) is best seller among all of the scent. But, when it goes out-of-stock, the next nearest product would be strawberry or satsuma (Japanese orange) which smells rather similar to it.

2nd - functions/purpose
For example, Olive shower gel on in the 3rd column is actually more suitable for normal to dry skin due to organic olive oil in it that helps to condition the skin. However, if it goes out-of-stock, customer could then choose between either moringa or shea which is more for dry to very dry skin.

Certain companies practice categorizing products according to their functions e.g all of the shower gels under the same category named - Shower Gels. However, The Body Shop actually categorize their products by scent. Why is that so? Karen explained to me that, this is done so as to make it easier for Sales Advisor to link-sell e.g. when customer get a shower gel, Sales Advisor will link-sell it with either a scrub or a body cream. Nonetheless, every company have their own special and unique way when it comes to dealing with their customers, thus, there's pros and cons in either way.

Advantages of managing category by category
- Makes the requisition of stocks much easier.
- Promotes link/up-selling.
- Creates assortments that satifsy customers.
- Improves link/up-selling of category
- Merchandise arranged according to their respective colours are able to draw more attention to the customers.

Disadvantages of managing category by category
- Too many product lines may get customer confuse.
- Insufficient space for displaying equal number of merchandise for all products.
- Shelves spaces not utilized wisely.

As quoted from Karen, The Body Shop does not exercise Catergory Captain.

Above is the Merchandise Classification and Organization Chart after asking Karen.


Types of Merchandise Management Planning Process
As known, there are two distinct types of merchandise management system for managing namely - Staple (Basic) Merchandise Categories and Fashion Merchandise Categories.

Above would be a simple illustration of the types of merchandise management. Thank you!

Done By: Christine❤