Most stores offer customers a very wide assortment of goods of certain groups. This is especially true for large supermarkets, where the number of positions can be in the thousands. Special people - merchandisers - make sure that the windows look attractive.
Basic principles of merchandising
From a marketing point of view, merchandising is a set of activities aimed at increasing the attractiveness of goods by using various techniques related to assortment, position in the window, color combinations and other issues related to the "display" of goods.
There are two main approaches to organizing the display of goods on the shelves and shop windows. The first one is sometimes referred to as “visual merchandising”, and is mainly associated with the impact on the perception of the buyer. For example, the fact that the most expensive items in a category tend to be at eye level is the result of this very approach. Visual merchandising is closely related to psychology and design, since the development of calculation methods takes into account the peculiarities of human perception, and also uses manipulative technologies.
Category merchandising is an approach that large retailers often take. It is based on the fact that suppliers and manufacturers of certain types of products conclude a special agreement with the store, which clearly stipulates the rules for displaying their goods. This method allows distributors to promote certain positions, achieving their placement in the most profitable parts of the window. In this case, the duties of the supermarket or store employees are reduced only to replenishing stocks of products in the windows, without delving into the intricacies of the principles of their placement.
Merchandiser work
In the staffing table of most supermarkets there are positions of merchandisers. Basically, however, their functions include exclusively updating the goods on the shelves, according to the previously known display principle. In fact, the job duties of such merchandisers are not much different from the functions that ordinary movers perform, except that working in a supermarket hall involves following a certain dress code. With regard to the remuneration of merchandisers in supermarkets, it is also comparable to the salary of unskilled personnel. Nevertheless, this position is a good option for starting a career in trade: with sufficient experience, the merchandiser can take the position of a sales assistant, then a cashier, shift supervisor, commodity manager, or even a store administrator.
In distribution organizations, there is also a position of a merchandiser, but the job responsibilities here are completely different. These employees spend almost all their working time on the road to retail outlets, monitoring the display of goods in the field, advising store employees and observing the work of competitors.
