Test: Retail

Internet of Things (IoT)

The concept of getting objects such as cars or household appliances to "talk" to each other; more things can now connect to the web, and this enables them to communicate with one another.

Showrooming

The consumer practice of examining products in a store, only to buy them for a lower price online.

Beacons

are devices that can transmit messages to other Bluetooth-enabled gizmos, such as smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches / have the capabilities to "recognize" devices based on their location or previous interactions / enables retailers to send tailored notifications to shoppers depending on where they are in the store or what type of customer they are.

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)

A chip embedded in an item's label or packaging; it stores information about the product and is primarily used for tracking purposes.

Markdown

A devaluation of a product due to its inability to be sold at the intended price; the price of the merchandise is permanently reduced to move inventory and make room for new products.

Endless Aisle

A feature of brick-and-mortar stores that enables customers to browse and shop the retailer's entire catalog of products.

Anchor Store

Also known as "draw tenant", "anchor tenant", or "key tenant"; one of the largest—if not the largest—store in a mall or shopping center. It's usually a well-known department store or retail chain; these stores bring in a ton of foot traffic into your vicinity, which opens up more opportunities for your business to get discovered.

EPOS

An abbreviation for electronic point of sale; basically, any computerized system used to record sales and control inventory.

Mobile Shopping

An increasingly common trend thanks to the popularity of smartphones and tablets, mobile shopping is the practice of purchasing goods or services using a mobile device.

Loss Leader

An item that's sold at a loss in order to attract more customers into a store.

Dead Stock

Sometimes called dead inventory, this is one thing no retailer wants to have; pertains to merchandise that has never been sold or has been in stock for a while.

High Speed Retail

Born out of people's need for faster services and less wait time, high speed retail is all about making the customer's shopping experience go by much quicker; include drive-thru grocery stores, pop-up stores, mobile businesses such as food trucks, or any retailer that implements urgent promotions or limited-time sales.

Flash Sales

Closely related to daily deals, this term refers to sale events that take place for a limited time; flash sales can last anywhere from several hours to a couple of days and entice consumers with huge bargains (usually 50% and up).

Omni-Channel Retailing

Consider this as the next generation of cross-channel and multi-channel retail.

EMV

Developed Europay®, Mastercard® and Visa® (hence the name) as a way to combat fraud; it's a technology that powers chip-and-pin cards, a breed of debit and credit cards that's far more secure than magnetic stripe (i.e. swipe-and-sign) cards.

Dynamic Clustering

If you have a fragmented customer base (i.e. your customers are scattered across different locations or fall under various socio-economic categories) then you know that growing your business as whole can be quite a challenge.

Unified Brand Experience

In retail, this concept is all about establishing a consistent brand or identity throughout multiple channels or platforms, including brick-and-mortar, ecommerce, or mobile.

Self-Serve

In retail, this means letting customers select and pay for goods themselves, without requiring the assistance of a live staff member.

Big Box Store

Its name pretty much says it all; a large establishment (often in a square or rectangular-shaped building), that's usually part of a major retail chain. Examples of such stores include Target, Home Depot, and Best Buy.

Stock-Keeping Unit

More commonly known as SKU, this term pertains to the unique identification of a particular product; it's used in inventory management and enables retailers to track and distinguish products from one another.

Social Commerce

Refers to retail models or ecommerce practices that incorporate social media, user-generated content, or social interaction.

Etailing

Short for "Electronic Retailing", this is the practice of selling goods over the Internet.

Pop-Up Store

Short-term shops or sales spaces that come and go within a given period. These stores can be set up in empty retail spaces, mall booths, or even in the middle of a park.

Mass Customization

The low-cost, high-volume, efficient production of individually customized offerings."; refers to the practice of offering products that can be tailored to each person's preferences, but can still be produced with mass-production efficiency.

Leveraged Buy-Out

The purchase of a company using borrowed funds.

Private Label

These are brands owned not by a manufacturer, but by a retailer or supplier. Retailers and suppliers purchase the goods, then label and market them under their name.

Augmented Reality

This concept is all about supplementing the user's real, physical world with virtual things, so they appear to coexist in the same environment; brings computer-generated objects into the real world — kind of like how in the movie Space Jam, Michael Jordan can be seen playing basketball with Looney Tunes characters.

Integrated Supply Chain

This is a network of businesses and contractors that work and coordinate closely together to manufacture, transport, distribute, and sell retail goods.

Click and Collect

This is a service in which retailers enable shoppers to buy items online and pick them up in their physical stores.

Relationship Retailing

This is a strategy that businesses implement to build loyalty and forge long-term relationships with customers.

Clienteling

This is a technique used by retail associates to deepen their relationship with each customer.

Planogram

This is a visual representation that shows how merchandise should be arranged on store shelves in order to drive more sales; it's a model that indicates the best placement and positioning of your merchandise.

Mystery Shopping

This is an activity practiced by market research companies, watchdog groups, or even retailers themselves to evaluate product or service quality or compliance acts like a regular consumer and performs tasks like asking questions, submitting complaints, or simply completing a purchase like they normally would.

Layaway

This is an agreement between the retailer and the customer in which the retailer puts an item on hold for the shopper until it is paid for in full; the consumer pays for the product in installments (interest-free), and will only receive the item once the payments are complete.

Cashwrap

This is the main checkout area of a retail store. In other words, this is where shoppers head to when they're ready to pay for their items.

Webrooming

This is the practice of looking at products online before buying them in actual brick-and-mortar stores.

Keystone Pricing

This is the practice of selling merchandise at a rate that's double its wholesale price.

Shrinkage

This pertains to the difference between the amount of stock that you have on paper and the actual stock you have available.

Mobile Payments

This pertains to the services and technology that enable consumers to pay using their mobile phones, instead of traditional forms of payment like cash or credit cards.

Contactless Payments

This refers to a system of payments powered by near field communication (NFC); they include NFC-enabled credit and debit cards, smart cards, and smartphones that allow customers to complete transactions without physically touching a payment terminal.

Drop Shipping

This refers to an arrangement between a retailer and a manufacturer/distributor in which the former transfers customer orders to the latter, who then ships the merchandise directly to the consumer.

Big Data

This refers to sets of data so massive, it would take sophisticated programs and really smart data scientists to make sense of it all.

Green Retailing

This refers to the environmentally-friendly practices that retailers get into; these can include switching a product's packaging to a recyclable one or giving customers reusable shopping bags instead of plastic.

Cross Merchandising

This refers to the practice of displaying or putting together products from different categories to drive add-on sales.

Product Life Cycle

This term is used to describe the series of stages that each commercial product goes through when it hits the market; these stages include introduction, growth in sales revenue, maturity, and decline.

Brick and Click

This term refers to retailers that integrate their brick and mortar store with their ecommerce site; companies even offer seamless web-to-store services such as in-store pick-ups and returns.

Niche Retailing

This term refers to the practice of selling only to a specific market segment; you specialize in a particular type of product (or sometimes a few closely related ones).

Tribetailing

This term refers to the retail practice of tailoring everything you do--from your store design, to your ads, to your employees--for a specific tribe or group of people.

Prestige Pricing

Usually implemented by high-end retailers and lifestyle brands, prestige pricing is a strategy in which an item is priced at a high level in order to denote exclusivity, high quality, or luxury. When an item is prestigiously priced, it is meant to attract status-conscious individuals or consumers who want to buy premium products.

Point-of-Sale (POS)

functions as a cash register or till system that lets retailers ring up sales and keep a record of those transactions in their stores.