Harrods

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 397.

Everybody knows Harrods, and most people agree it's the best shop ill London. Even the Queen and Queen Mother do their shopping there, so it must be good... It's the largest and most famous store in England. You can get everything from large tropical snakes to antique pianos.

People like shopping in Harrods, and they spend a lot of money. The most money ever spent by a single customer was two million two hundred thousand pounds, and he paid in cash! It was the shop's biggest cash sale.

About 50,000 people go to Harrods every day, but the busiest times are Christmas and the January and July Sales, when many more shoppers visit the store. People can find the biggest bargains on the First day of the Sales. The first day is the most crowded. On that day, about 300,000 people visit Harrods.

One of the most popular buys at Christmas time are the Christmas puddings - Harrods sells over 120 tons of these a year.

Harrods has a great many overseas visitors, and it exports many of its goods. Some of the most unusual exports have included a Persian carpet to Iran, a fridge to Finland, six bread rolls to New York, and a pound of sausages to a yacht in the Mediterranean.

MARKETING

Marketing includes all the business activities connected with the movement of goods and services from producers to consumers. Sometimes it is called distribution. On the one hand, marketing is made up of such activities as transporting, storing and selling goods and, on the other hand, a series of decisions you make during the process of moving goods from producer to user. Marketing operations include product planning, buying, storage, pricing, promotion, selling, credit, traffic and marketing research.

The ability to recognize early trends is very important. Producers must know why, where, for what purpose the consumers buy. Market research helps the producer to predict what the people will want. And through advertising he attempts to influence the customer to buy. Marketing operations are very expensive. They take up more than half of the consumer's dollar. The trend in the USA has been to high mass consumption. The construction of good shopping centers has made goods available to consumers. It provided a wide range of merchandise and plenty of parking facilities.

WHOLESALING

Wholesaling is a part of the marketing system. It provides channels of distribution which help to bring goods to the market. Generally indirect channels are used to market manufactured consumer goods. It could be from the manufacturer to the wholesaler, from the retailer to the consumer or through more complicated channels. A direct channel moves goods from the manufacturer or producer to the consumer.

Wholesaling is often a field of small business. About a quarter of wholesaling units account for one-third of total sales.

Two-third of the wholesaling middleman are merchant wholesalers who take title to the goods they deal in. There are also agent middlemen who negotiate purchases or sales or both. They don't take title to the goods they deal in. Sometimes they take possession though. These agents don't earn salaries. They receive commissions. This is a percentage of the value of the goods they sell.

Wholesalers simplify the process of distribution. As a wholesaler handles a large assortment of items from numerous manufacturers he reduces the problem of both manufacturer and retailer. The store-keeper does not have to deal directly with thousands of different people. He usually has a well-stocked store and deals with only a few wholesalers.