Merchandise Assortment

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Merchandise Assortment
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Decisions, Decisions

• Good planning is critical
• Target market analysis
• Merchandise decisions
• Pricing decisions

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Merchandise Plan

• Basic budgeting tool that assists the retailer or
  buyer in meeting department or classification
  goals
• Uses figures from past year to predict plan for
  current year
• Planned sales
• Planned stock
• Planned reductions
• Planned purchases

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Merchandise Planning

• Method used by retailers to make intelligent
  decisions prior to purchasing merchandise for
  store
• Prevents over-and under-buying
• Can be for entire store or specific departments
• Merchandise classification group of similar items

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Components of Merchandise Plan

• Planned sales expressed in figures and
  reflect sales goals for the month
• Planned stock amount of merchandise a store
  needs in order to meet the sales
• Planned reductions amount of any markdowns,
  adjustments, and loss
• Planned purchases amounts of needed
  merchandise to meet sales goals

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Merchandise Life Cycle

• Introduction
• Growth
• Acceptance
• Decline

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Assortment Planning Tools

• Categorizing merchandise
• Staple merchandise sells well over a long
  period of time
• Seasonal merchandise sells well at certain
  times or seasons during the year
• Convenience merchandise merchandise customers
  buys with little planning

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Assortment Planning Tools

• Stock Lists
• Basic stock list used for items that a store
  should always keep in stock, same items with a
  minimum amount to always be kept in stock
• Model stock list used for fashion merchandise,
  since a shorter life span, list is shorter and
  without specific stock numbers
• Never-out stock list most popular merchandise
  in the store with items being added or dropped
  based upon popularity