Comments on: Merchandising: How To Attract Retail Customers Without Discounting

By: bobphibbs

bobphibbs — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:41:29 +0000

Excellent points Estan! Thanks for commenting!

By: estan

estan — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:57:56 +0000

I’m running a kids boutique for around 6 months. I very agree to what Doc. Bob said, customers won’t really know the actual cost of the merchandise that they are looking for. Especially the apparel’s business. So, from the experience that I have gained after these few months. I found that people will only value the merchandise according to their own “scale”. To me, how people “measure” the value is following the three aspect as below, so do I.

1. The outlet/store design.
2. The Display of the merchandise.
3. The Sales Person.

For example, you have an item cost 30 and you intent to sell at 60. Then doing something special on display to let people feel that it worth 100. So, once they flip the price tag and found out it’s only 60. They will happy to pay for it without any discount.

By: bobphibbs

bobphibbs — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:55:59 +0000

Merchandising is only about what happens in the store. What you are asking about is marketing to get people to come in the doors. Check out these posts:
A Five Picture Guide to Marketing http://www.retaildoc.com/blog/a-five-picture-guide-to-marketing/
Leverage Virtual Trust With Social Media http://www.retaildoc.com/blog/virtual-trust-social-media/
Growing Your Business Without Groupon http://www.retaildoc.com/blog/growing-your-business-without-groupon/

Thanks for commenting Brian and hope those help.

By: bobphibbs

bobphibbs — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:52:17 +0000

Hi Chantelle, there are a bunch of posts about merchandising that I’ve written! Checkout:

7 Ways to Transform Retail Store Displays http://www.retaildoc.com/blog/7-ways-to-transform-store-displays-into-sales/
10 Insights To Merchandising Your Retail Store http://www.retaildoc.com/blog/10-insights-merchandising/
Buying Tips: Gremlins Didn’t Put That There http://www.retaildoc.com/blog/rr/

Hope that helps and thanks for commenting!

By: Chantelle

Chantelle — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:43:22 +0000

I find a lot of these blogs just state the obvious and are basically a continuation of the title…
Merchandising is important. Got it. Now what? Would be great to see read some tips, suggestions,
Experiences. Such as some of the examples written by the readers, those are helpful !

Thanks

By: Derek Thielen

Derek Thielen — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:29:01 +0000

Increase your value proposition or start out with a higher price, then your not discounting your profit. As value goes up, price sensitivity goes down.

By: Brian Ponawalski

Brian Ponawalski — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:39:39 +0000

This article has a great title, but unfortunately the contents dont seem to match Can you write one that talks more about attraction? Not just merchandising and selling? How do you get them to come in from their homes?
Thanks!

By: Easton King

Easton King — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:31:00 +0000

Also, it doesn’t need to actually be a bargain. The consumer just needs to *think* they got a bargain

By: David Geller

David Geller — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:13:56 +0000

In my field we do custom design jewelry, which is very similar to landscaping. you custom make something per customer request and you charge
Labor +
Materials (for us its gold)

The selling of your “stuff” has two components. You CAN discount product because it has turn. I don’t know markup in landscaping but lets say you double your costs.
if you buy it for $50 and sell it for $100, that’s nice, if you discount to $70 you might think thats bad. but if you do that once a week, a $50 investment in January by December will bring you $1040 in profit in a year (52 weeks x $20 in profit)
Thats turn.

but labor doesn’t have turn. The guys can’t work faster, there is no turn.

So the suggestion is to alwsy break down the prices in two columns:
Materials Labor
tree $300 Plant tree $75
Shrubs $200 Plant Shrubs $65
Hay $50 put out hay $15
Total material $550 Total labor $155 total Job = $705

Showing it this way makes the total not look so large “Look, the tree is only $300!” But if you discounted the WHOLE job 20% you’d only get $564. But try this, “I understand your concern Mr Jones on being around your budget, but AS YOU KNOW WE CAN’T DISCOUNT LABOR. but maybe we can do something on the materials for you.”

So if you only discounted the materials 20% ($564) it would be $451 + labor of $155 for a total job of $606. So instead of getting $564 you’d get $606, $42 more. All American know labor isn’t discounted.-David Geller

By: Carroll

Carroll — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 16:10:22 +0000

Nice base for us to work from. Thanks Bob!