The Emerging Challenges in Retail Industry

The retail industry is the first that faced the consequences of deteriorating economic conditions due to lockdown impact. Already the competition in the retail space is intensifying with an entry of newer players in the fray. The economic downturn has prompted the consumers to seek value and forced the retailers to operate at low margins and low volumes. The double whammy is the growing clout of digital retail that is eating into the market share.

With the economy on the path to recovery now, the challenge before the retail players is to attract the consumers back to normal levels and increase their top-lines.

How does retail consulting companies help a retailer?

In these challenging times, a retail consulting company helps develop a retail-strategy for different stores or retail businesses. Their area of expertise is in promotions, merchandising, location, store design, and even in workforce requirement makes retail consulting services a necessity today.

A retail consultant can help decide in the location of the company’s store, product placement in the store, staff selection and more.

A retail consulting company has vast experience to work in the market that is leveraged to give tangible benefits to the retailers. It assists a retailer to address challenges and discover value in the business. A retail business consultant offers innovative solutions to companies that do business in a new format such as increasing their digital footprint.

What are the challenges emerging before the industry?

Some of the challenges before the retail sector are:

• New customers

Understanding the demographics of new customers is becoming a challenge today. Partnership with local players with complete knowledge on customer requirement, supply-chain and distribution is key to success and a retail consulting company can guide you in your endeavour.

• Online format

Convenience to store from home and safe and secure payment option along with deep discounts has proved to be a big disruptor in the retail business. Understanding the evolving trend and repositioning accordingly is extremely important in the retail segment.

The retail business consultants offer their vast expertise to promote products on these digital platforms. Building customized programs, launching customer-loyalty schemes to increase the top-line and attract new customers is all part of the new retail strategy that is being explored and implemented by retail chains.

What are the different retail consulting services offered to the companies?

Some of the services offered by the retail consulting companies are:

• Retail strategic planning
• Retail performance improvement
• Store design / construction
• Real estate site selection
• Retail store operations
• Assortment planning
• Inventory planning and control
• Back office support
• New retail concept development
• Retail brand development
• Retail licensing
• Retail marketing
• Visual merchandising
• Consumer research for retail
• Retail information technology
• Retail interim management
• Retail executive search
• Staff and structure
• Retail museum services

Conclusion

In the digital age, new-age customers are transforming the retail sector. Not only the need of the customer is changing but also the way they shop at retail stores. Today online shopping is becoming a new challenge for retail stores. To navigate successfully through these testing times, a retail consulting company offer their expertise with a proven track record to craft an effective growth-oriented strategy. These retail consultant services are offered in every domain and can be of great assistance to increase the top and bottom line of a company.

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