The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

Merchandising

DANIEL THOMAS COOK

Rutgers University-Camden, USA

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs169

Merchandising refers mainly to retail practices that seek to sell and promote products. Perhaps the most common form of merchandising is the display and physical grouping of goods in terrestrial selling space. More broadly, merchandising can include the promotion of related goods through physical or visual juxtaposition and association, such as when a film and a food product or food chain are merchandised together. Modern merchandising took shape largely in response to the rise of the large-scale department store and dry goods store in the United States from the late 1800s into the early twentieth century (Leach 1993). In these emporia of products, the arrangement of goods served both practical and tactical ends whereby customers could locate similar goods, such as lingerie, outerwear, or kitchen utensils, in a defined area. The contemporary supermarket stands as exemplar and key site of merchandising encountered on an everyday basis.

Common merchandising tactics include: purposeful placement of products on certain shelves (i.e., eye level for adults, near the floor for children); “end caps,” which are displays of particular products at the end of an aisle so as to draw attention to them; “strategic adjacencies” whereby different kinds of goods likely sought after by the same kind of customer are placed near each other (e.g., baby foods and things for mothers might be placed across ...