Experience Value Provided by Independent Small-Sized Retailers

Abstract

Raising the “experience value” of customers has become an important issue in the retail industry, with the goal of producing a “special feeling” for each store. Individual correspondence to customers is likely to be advantageous to independent retailers. However, individual skills communication in the sales phase is insufficient. For retailers, differentiation of assortment is an issue due to the activities of purchasing involved in the production phase. However, it is not clear how differentiation of assortment can be achieved for small-sized retailers with limited resources. Therefore, there is a need to enter and analyze retailers’ sorting activities in specific industries. In this paper, we examined the conditions of management for the case of “Ueki shoten”, a vegetable and fruit retailing business. In this study of the activities of the retailer, our analysis of skill and selection of merchandising focused only on purchase and sales. In this case, we found that active intervention in the production and consumption phases led to creation of new demand.

Keywords

• fruit and vegetable distribution
• greengrocer
• merchandising
• demand creation