Detaljhandelns stora utmaning : en studie om detaljhandelns försäljningskoncept och detaljhandelns kunder

Sammanfattning: The society has strongly developed and changed the condition of the trades. The retail trade is no exception; it has changed and developed in the same pace as society. The retail trade is a very broad and extensive trade as all people come in contact with frequently. In the past people shopped locally but nowadays people have the entire world as their marketplace because of the development of Internet. Globalisation gives customers wider opportunities, which demands new and different sales concepts. The greater opportunities for customers give the customers a more powerful position in the market. It becomes more and more important for the sales concepts to be perceived the way they want to be perceived. New sales concepts have been developed and they can not be certain how they are perceived by the customers. The essay has both a survey study and a case study as examinations initial position, as the essay comprises both the sales concepts and the customers’ perspective. Hermeneutic has been chosen as the science view and deduction has been chosen as the conclusion ability. Both quality and quantity data has been used as well as primary and secondary data. To gather data both a poll investigation and interviews have been carried out. Interviews have been done with the sales concepts but also with trade experts to obtain a more objective view. Different theories have been used to obtain an overall impression, the theories have then been formed together to a theoretic synthesis that is used as a foundation of the analysis. The theories that have been selected deals with, among other things, the degree of involvement, how the sales concepts communicate with their market and how to create satisfied and loyal customers. Consideration to previous studies has also been taken to obtain a more increased overall impression. Interviews have been undertaken with key persons in each sales concept and three trade experts to obtain data about the four different sales concepts; Independent store, Store part of a chain, Hypermarket and Internet store. The result from the poll investigation showed, among other things, that the most common place for purchase was stores part of a chain followed by hypermarkets. It also showed that women and men hold opinions that differ from each other for example price and influence remedy. The investigation also showed that men and women chose different sales channels to locate their purchase. Even when age is considered the respondents answers differs. The investigation showed that Internet in a great extension is used as an information source although a lot fewer people chose to shop at Internet stores. The majority of the respondents thought that all sales concepts need to focus more on cutting the price but they also thought that they need to focus more on service. The respondents have some trouble separating some of the sales concepts from each other and therefore found it to be more difficult to determine their focus, for example Store part of a chain and Hypermarket. The conclusions that appear in the essay are that the sales concepts and the customers’ opinions about each other match rather well and that the companies have realised that the customers have a stronger position on the market and therefore adopted to that. The sales concept should avoid dividing their focus and they should rather choose one or a few aspects to focus on. Finally it is concluded that the home electronic trade has a rather homogeneous customer group which they should take advantage of in an effective way when they put their sales concepts into the market.