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Tough Love: An In-Depth Look at Retail Pricing Practices
April 8, 2013
Retailers continue to escalate the number of price changes they send to stores and other channels. Their field human resource infrastructure groans under the sheer weight of the work effort involved in keeping signage and tags up to date, but pressured by perceived consumer price sensitivity and increased competitive pressures, these price changes continue. This [...]
Optimizing Assortments to Invigorate Retail: Benchmark Report 2012
August 8, 2012
This year, we see a drastic difference in the perceived value of new merchandising tools and retailers’ understanding of how they can be effectively used to improve the product mix they put in front of increasingly-empowered consumers. Key Findings Include: Most merchants place a similar value on new merchandising tools — regardless of size or sales [...]
Retail Pricing in a Post-Channel World: Benchmark Report 2012
April 10, 2012
RSR Research has conducted benchmarks of retailers’ pricing strategies since 2007. During that time, we have seen retailers swing from trying to achieve Everyday Low Price (EDLP) to hyper-promotions as the bottom fell out of consumer demand, to a panicked response to consumers’ latest ability to compare prices, whether between online and store or between [...]
Twenty-first Century Merchandising Takes Hold: Benchmark 2011
August 15, 2011
In 2010, data gathered from RSR’s annual Merchandising Benchmark Report showed a dramatic change in Retailers attitudes towards merchandise operations management. At that time, we defined seven core tenets of 21st Century Merchandising. This year, we gave retailers the opportunity to grade their progress in adopting these tenets. How do they rate themselves? What are [...]
Crystal Ball 2.0: The State of Retail Demand Forecasting
May 1, 2011
The concept of “managing demand” is fairly new to retail: the idea that demand is something more than what a retailer must respond to – that it is something a retailer shapes and influences. Some might argue retailers do shape demand through promotions and other offers to consumers, but more often than not such offers [...]
Optimizing Price in a Transparent World: Benchmark 2011
April 15, 2011
RSR Research’s latest report, “Optimizing Price in a Transparent World: Benchmark 2011,” RSR’s fourth annual benchmark on the topic, finds today’s retailer challenged by a sophisticated, price-sensitive consumer. As consumers research online for the best deals before leaving home or use their smart phones to find the lowest prices in stores, they are not only [...]
Defining 21st Century Merchandising: Benchmark 2010
September 1, 2010
RSR conducts benchmark studies on the state of the art and science of merchandising every year. This year, our going-in hypothesis was that after a series of fits and starts, the retail thought process has genuinely and irrevocably changed. We expected to see this change affect merchants across several dimensions: an embrace of science-based processes, [...]
Getting Back to Good: Retail Pricing 2010
January 15, 2010
Today, the economy has stabilized and most economists report that the recession is over. As the dust settles, it appears that the ability to maintain gross margins and reduce inventory levels served many retailers well, and pricing capabilities helped play a critical role in saving the “retail bacon.” However, going forward, a new challenge emerges: how to [...]
Retail Merchandising: Buckling Down in a Tough Economy, Benchmark Report 2009
September 15, 2009
Dramatic changes in economic conditions have accelerated changes in merchandising organizations. Localized assortments and optimized price lifecycles have become recognized necessities for retail success. However, Retail Winners, those who still outperform their peers in year over year sales continue to lead in supporting these merchandising operations with technology. In this benchmark, retailers tell us how [...]
Precision Inventory Management in the Age of Localization: Benchmark 2009
August 18, 2009
RSR set out to understand how retailers and their trading partners are responding to the unique challenges posed them in 2009: the need to localize assortment to increase shopper relevancy and appeal, and the need to reduce inventory as much as possible. The responses are encouraging. In a time of merchant princes, “product” was once [...]