Peddlers were the pioneers that set up the retail industry thousands of years ago, they traded and bartered with customers individually and over the course of centuries we ended up with the shopping systems, malls and complexes that we use today. Retail in its formal definition is the sale of consumer goods and services to customers through a variety of mediums.
A supply chain is a system of people, machine, transportation and co-ordination that gets the product from the manufacturer to the supplier and then to the customer. Some of them even feed the used products back into the system to recycle and develop new products. These supply chains are crucial to the business of retail.
A retailer, thus, is a person or a firm that caters to the demand of end customers in the supply chain by providing them the product and services they require. These retailers do not take in bulk orders or handle wholesale requests and only specialize in handling end-user requests.
While superficially it seems like a simple enough job, take an order- deliver the product and get paid but that’s not even close to the level of complexity retail holds. There are all sorts of variables and features that determine the course of action a retailer takes, there’s an extensive study of the market and trends involved, the core demographic is figured out beforehand.
What will be the type of store layout and customer service along with a diverse mix of prices, ranges, an assortment of products, people and location are used. In addition to these strategic hurdles, there’s a cut-throat competition in the market and getting doorstep delivery, an online portal, customer grievances and product returns- all those need to be handled by retail in addition to their other obligations.
Sounds chaotic, doesn’t it? Chaos doesn’t even begin to explain it and thus management is really crucial to retail businesses. Retail Management makes sure the records are up to date and inventory is well maintained, segregation of products into smaller groups and attractive display of these products. Management also handles a lot of the human resources in the business, the employees ranging from cashiers that manage the sales and report back to management with timely reports to janitors that maintain the hygiene.
The scope is endless for Retail Management, as the sheer size of skilled professionals required and there being a shortage of them at the moment creates a very alluring opportunity for people with appropriate skills. Personal traits like good communication skills, leadership, problem-solving ability, analytical, logical and organizational skills are important for this domain and people with these qualities inherent in them or learned through experience can make a great career out of retail management.
For people that are looking to start fresh with retail management as their career, there are courses according to all stages of expertise offered in India, a diploma, a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and a post-graduate diploma can all be completed.
Profiles like Retail Manager, Store Manager, Retail Buyer, Merchandiser, Analyst, Supply Chain Distributor, Marketing Executive and Warehouse Manager at the back end while Brand Manager, Customer Care Executives, Image Promoter, Merchandise Manager and Department Manager at the front end are all positions easily in grasp and readily available in the market with one common prerequisite, a retail management degree. All of these profiles offer a more than generous starting salaries of lump sum 4 to 5 lakh per annum and with apt experience scales up to 7-8 LPA after promotions to better profiles. Amazon, Flipkart, Reliance Group, ITC, Unilever, Tata, Mahindra and Aditya Birla Group are just some MNCs that hire retail management students in bulk capacities.
India is a country with a strong retail presence in all sorts of markets. Our population itself makes for one of the largest consumer markets in Asia and the entire world, the purchasing power and demand has been high and inching upwards forevermore. The firms in the retail business in India are flourishing and the employment rates are steady with good salaries, so any students looking to go into a retail management course have their work cut out for them if they put in the right amount of effort and then some more- a career can be made out of it and one that provides steady progress too.
