What is retail industry?

The retail industry refers to a commodity sales industry that sells products produced by industrial and agricultural producers directly to residents for daily consumption or to social groups for public consumption through buying and selling. .

The more mainstream definitions of the retail industry are divided into two types: one is the definition from a marketing perspective: the retail industry is considered to be any individual or company engaged in product marketing activities from producers to consumers. They buy goods from wholesalers, middlemen or manufacturers and sell directly to consumers. This definition is very common in the marketing literature in the past thirty years. The other is the definition of the U.S. Department of Commerce: The retail trade industry includes all entities that sell smaller quantities of goods to the general public. Extended information

The expansion of scale will greatly reduce the operating costs of enterprises and generate economies of scale. China's retail industry has not yet reached the scale of foreign retail industries. It only improved the comprehensive gross profit margin to a certain extent, but various operating expenses remained high, resulting in a net profit margin far lower than that of international giants such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart. Excessively high operating costs are attributed to two aspects. External factors are due to high logistics costs in my country; internal factors are due to high sales costs and management costs.

The management of Chinese commercial enterprises still mainly relies on traditional management methods and methods, lacking innovation capabilities. There is a lack of market segmentation and insufficient standardized management in terms of product mix, service standards, prices, promotions and store layout. What is particularly outstanding is the lack of high-tech support, mainly due to the low level of informatization.

Business management does not use modern electronic information technology. With management information systems, electronic data processing systems, and decision support systems as the core, foreign commercial enterprises have formed automated management assisted by the network, which is completely different from the traditional retail operation method.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Retail Industry