Style and Statistics

Chapter 3 Assortment Management

Historically, merchants have been product centric. “Product centric” means they have been focused on what products they carry and bring to the market. Fashion trends can change from season to season. Customer preferences are ever-evolving. The channels or mechanisms by which customers are shopping or buying are rapidly changing. Customer choices are at an all-time high, and competition is at the customers’ fingertips. Many retailers maintain a standardized assortment among their locations. Other retailers vary their assortment among locations as well as channels, such as e-commerce. Retailers are beginning to find that in order to stay in the game, they have to move from being product centric to customer centric. How do retailers best vary the product offerings to increase customer satisfaction? How do retailers tailor the assortment to target specific customers walking into each and every location?

In the beginning of my retail planning/merchandising career, I started out in the juniors division of a corporate office. I was so excited to be in a division where I could wear the clothes that I worked with. I thought, This is the coolest job! Picking out cute clothes all day is what I was meant to do! A year or so later, I moved to the misses’ sportswear division. I thought to myself, No worries, cute clothes are easy to pick out in any area. Well, I thought wrong.

You see, I was working at a retailer in Florida and in the conservative misses’ ...