Retail marketing - Essay Example

Retail lifecycle The retail lifecycle has had a shortening trend since 1920. The effects of this could be explained towards the technological advances, easy ways in production processes, approaches towards marketing of products, sensitizations to a larger group of customers easily e.g. media, world wide web et cetera. The implications: Long-term investment in expensive property must be viewed with caution. The marketing strategy is to invest in ideas that give a return in the present or near future.

Expensive property e.g. a billboard campaign or even an ongoing advert over the television should be thorough analyzed towards costs and benefits there from. The idea of employing more sales person should be evaluated towards gains. Such huge investments can fail to be recovered if losses are made in the future. Cautionary measures are needed here. The risk of the strategy at hand should be analyzed. A satisfactory return on investment should be achieved in a shorter timescale. This implies that any implemented strategy in marketing should bring in returns as soon as possible (David, 126).

Investing in live commercials or even a different store layout or a different market campaign should be able to realize profits for its justification. The marketing mix strategy adopted should reflect increase in sales return and if otherwise it should be dropped and adaptation of another idea sought. There should be a review towards the personnel in charge of the marketing section since this is the key to any organizations’ future growth and avoidance of decline phase. Utilizing the portfolio analysis vis-a-vis the lifecycle will help the retailer undertake the most profitable options to undertake.

This implies the marketing mix so adopted should be able to generate income throughout the lifecycle. The idea behind this is to adopt the most profitable mix. This could be adopting two marketing ideas or more e.g. the target market analysis and the advertising company directed towards the same. The customer needs should be analyzed to meet the product expectation of a customer. By doing so, the organization is bound to stay on track through the lifecycle. The steady generation of income is bound to keep the returns at a steady state.

Change is needed in the mix by analyzing the competitors’ trend. Sometimes a format should be superseded before entering a sharp decline in the lifecycle. This implies that all manner of means to save the retailer from making major losses should be adopted. This calls for reducing the risks involved in the overall collapse of a retail business. Strategies towards saving the retail business would be towards dropping marketing ideas that are not generating income e.g. a sales campaign that has no returns since its starts or is making losses.

Adoption of new strategy is advisable in such a case e.g. change of product mix, new market ventures etc. a format should be laid down to form a new strategy. Collapse of an entity may take years to recover its earnings. To recover it should review renewing the entire organization. This implies that the causes for collapse should be analyzed and acted upon. This would involve such measures as restructuring a whole organization. This should be viewed on the aspects of management, marketing, production process etc.

The decline has been reached hence to survive in the market; the retail should minimize on concepts requiring a lot of money. They should aim to sustain the customer base at hand then put in a strategy to revitalize the organization (Peter, 245). This would involve creating a new product, a new campaign, target another market etc. Works cited David Gilbert, Retail marketing management, 2nd Ed., Prentice Hall, New Jersey, U.S.A. 2003. Peter McGoldrick, Retail marketing, 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York City, New York, 2002.