Retail Management Report 2022

Running head: RETAIL MANAGEMENT
Retail Management
Australian Retail Market

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Executive Summary
The aim of the report is to discuss the market trend and key drivers of the Australian retailing
system in order to identify the present opportunities and threats for the businesses operating
in the same industry. The paper has also discussed regarding different acquisitions that have
taken place in the retailing market of the country to understand the strategies business adopt
to continue survival and growth. From the analysis, it could be said that the Australian
retailing system is competitive however the declining revenue and sales of the businesses
representing a future failure image of the businesses. Besides this, the disruptive technology
in the market has changed the face of the industry due to which a number of businesses are
getting fail.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Background and Major Changes and Developments in the Australian Retail System..........3
Marketing Efforts of Discount Stores....................................................................................5
Marketing Efforts of Department Stores................................................................................5
Key Trends and Developments in the Industry......................................................................5
Key Drivers of Evolution of Retail Segment of Australia.....................................................6
Connecting retailers with the customers by a mobile........................................................6
Making use of data properly for increased efficiency........................................................7
The future face of Retailing in Australia and Alternative retail store options.......................7
Recommendations......................................................................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Retail management is the procedure that helps the consumer in procuring the wanted
merchandise from the retail stores for their consumption. It is comprised of all the steps
needed to drag the customer to the retail store and meet their purchasing needs (Prabhu,
2019). Getting involved in the retail management results in saving time and ensuring
consumers to locate their wanted merchandise and get satisfied. Retail management has been
the fast-growing segment of a career in the entire industry with a huge development in the
Australian market. The Australian retail market is the emerging and attractive market across
the world and has asked for an increasing number of professions in the segment. The intent of
this paper is to discuss the retail system of Australian comprising discount stores and
department stores. The paper is also presenting the details related to the type of merchandise
they deal in. In addition to this, it is providing details regarding the diversification and
mergers adopted by the business involved in the industry. Further, in the end, the paper is
highlighting the future image of the industry in the Australian market.
Background and Major Changes and Developments in the Australian Retail System
The retailing system in the Australian market has shown a comparatively passive
performance in the year 2018. The retailing sector of Australia is comprised of the different
segment such as fashion, discount store, departmental store, etc. Australia's big-box retailer
deals with the increasing pressure because of the altering behaviour of the customer. Busy
lifestyle and the need for between experience of shopping is resulting in enforcing people of
Australia to favour small stores that are located at the nearer place to their workplaces and
homes in comparison to the big box outlets because they are placed at less convenient
locations (EuroMonitor, 2019).

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Discount Stores – Businesses operating in the industry of Discount Variety stores have to
deal with tough situations of trading in the last five years. The industry lost the major part of
its base of the customer because of high competition from the external rivals like online
retailers and discount department stores (IBIS World, 2019b). As it is known that major of
the goods of the industry is supposed to be counter-cyclical in nature, the increasing
discretionary incomes in last five years have resulted in the decrease in the demand for the
goods of industry. This results in the fall in the revenue of the industry to a yearly percentage
of 2.3 in the coming five years through 2018-19, to around $2.3 billion (IBIS World, 2019b).
The market is comprised of some of the big players and the number of small owner-operated
stores. The Australian discount store industry is comprised of several businesses such as
BigW, Kmart Australia, Chickenfeed, and Crazy Clark’s. These players are some of the big
players which are dominating the small retailers in the market. These stores ate involved in
offering a wide assortment of products to its customers and do not focus on price (Lamb, Hair
and McDaniel, 2010).
Department Stores – Businesses operating in the industry of Department Stores have
struggled a lot in the last five years because of the weak environment of retailing and mainly
adverse consumer emotion. Customers have today become price-conscious and unwilling to
invest high amount from their discretionary income, in its place they are planning to pay all
their debts and increase their savings. The revenue of the industry is expected to decrease at
the yearly 0.2% over five years through 2018-19, to around $18.8 billion (IBIS World,
2019a). Indeterminate economic circumstances and increasing external competition from
online businesses are anticipated to add to a 0.5% decrease in the revenue of the industry over
the current year (IBIS World, 2019a). The industry of Department Stores is majorly
concentrated, due to the presence of top four players anticipated to account for around 95% of
the revenue of the industry in the financial year 2018-19. The main players in the industry of

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department stores are David Jones, Myer, and Target Australia. The types of products offered
by these retailers are women, babies, and men wear, cosmetics, homewares, flooring, video
games, accessories, footwear, and electrical (Videtic and Steele, 2015).
Marketing Efforts of Discount Stores
Discount stores are involved in offering a different assortment of the products and to attract
customer to purchase those products they adopt different promotion or marketing techniques.
For instance, Kmart is one of the well-known discount stores of Australia which has been
involved in altering its brand positioning from the store that holds everything to attract
customer to a brand that majorly targets mothers and women in specific. They are involved in
playing catchy pop songs as their commercials in place of the basic jingles to depict their
brand as the fun, funky, as well as hip. The brand has also exerted efforts in order to let
people know its presence on the social media platform with the pages like shelfies and Kmart
hacks that demonstrates DIY home styling and makeovers (MBA Skool, 2019). The
company’s commercial of “Big Gas Savings” is one of the popular promotions executed.
Marketing Efforts of Department Stores
The marketing and promotional strategies adopted by departmental stores in the Australian
market have been explained with an example of Target Australia. Target has been involved in
adopting BTL and ATL policies of promotion in order to augment its base of customer. The
company has introduced ad campaigns in the print and electronic media by the use of
magazines, television, coupons, newspaper, and flyers (Bhasin, 2019). The company holds a
broad presence over social media platform through portals such as YouTube, Twitter,
Instagram, and Facebook. Target also sends direct mails to its regular or loyal consumers.

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Key Trends and Developments in the Industry
The Australian retail market has come under news related to different mergers and
acquisition that are being planned to be introduced for the growth. One of the big acquisitions
that took place in the Australian market by the leading retail group that is Woolworths of
David Jones. In the year 2014, the company acquired David Jones with the motive to increase
the market value of the parent business and augmented customer base. The increasing growth
of David Jones in the Australian market attracted Woolworths to acquire the business in order
to make the entry in the department store market and offer customers a range of products
(Woolworths Holdings Limited, 2014). In addition to this, Target Australia has also been
involved in one of the biggest acquisition of Australia by Wesfarmers. Target Australia is
considered to be the leading department store chain of the country which has covered major
part of the share due to which Wesfarmers acquired the brand in order to cover the market
share and offer customers better services (Target, 2018).
Key Drivers of Evolution of Retail Segment of Australia
The retail landscape of Australia is going through an intense structural change, with the
disruption of the new technologies to the retail ecosystem and altering how customers interact
communicate with the stores over offline, on-the-go, and online medium. The market is
becoming complex for the retailers for navigating these new technologies, with the numerous
key trends influencing the manner retailers to adopt to do business in the new environment or
circumstance (Carver, 2017). Businesses have to understand the way to leverage these
technologies logically for better business management, i.e. to inform about how they handle
their supply and market demand.
Connecting retailers with the customers by a mobile
The internet’s commoditization has allowed several businesses to be a retailer. Buyers,
wholesalers, manufacturers, and suppliers can today sell directly to the customer. Mobile is

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intensely quickening this change, stimulating traditional businesses to re-design their
strategies and move in the direction of the customer. It is not good for the businesses to ‘plant
a flag’ and expect that customers will come with 3 in 4 people owning a smartphone, the
power is in the hands of the customer (Simon Banks, 2014). The people of Australia are agile
and smarter in thinking to search, shop, and secure their deals, which reflects that the retailers
need to reproduce this mind-set. Customers keep the expectation of availing premium retail
experiences on each platform. Mobile technology is the one that offers it the perfect
opportunity for delivering the custom-made experience of shopping which will support in
connecting the retailer with the consumers at each stage of the shopping cycle.
Making use of data properly for increased efficiency
Merchant, product, and consumer data is present everywhere. As per the reports of Bosch
Software Innovations', 90% of the population of the world is connected to the internet (Simon
Banks, 2014). Attaching data on the global and local scale for creating faster, simpler, and
richer experiences of shopping will support the retailers in differentiating themselves with
their rivals. In the present advanced environment, it can be easily identified that where the
consumer is purchasing a product in big quantity and where the same product is failing at any
other location. With this information, the business can stop purchasing the planned inventory
at the location where it is facing the challenge of selling the product. This offers an increasing
number of opportunities to the retailer to leverage this real-time data of the customer for
altering their supply cycle and gain increased efficiencies in all over the business, increasing
profits and gaining more opportunities for sales. The similar data is regularly used for
delivering a unified customer experience at the counter and also work for the customer
engagement that ultimately offers a personalized experience of shopping for all the people.
Technology is today transforming and getting better, linking customers with retailers (Simon
Banks, 2014).

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The future face of Retailing in Australia and Alternative retail store options
The Australia retail industry is dealing with disruption. Foreign businesses have taken entry
in the Australian market and are caring along with them the new retailing approach (Duvall,
2018). This has not just changed the retail landscape but has also changed the customer.
Customers are considered to be tech-savvy, busier and affluent. Their hopes are increasing
and technology is changing their behaviour (The Conversation, 2018). There are several
forecasts presented for the retailing future.
Recommendations
From the above analysis of the report, it could be recommended that if the discount stores and
department stores of Australia desire to continue operating in the market then they have to re-
shape their business model along with the planning for overcoming the losses and increasing
market share. The reshaping of the business model will allow them to be a flexible business
that can adopt change at the time of introduction of a new trend in the market. In addition to
this, if they adopt the market trend and install new technology for better customer experience
will help in gaining their trust.
Conclusion
The above report has provided a detailed analysis of the Australian retailing system along
with the operations of different discount stores and department stores. The report has
provided a market analysis of the industry comprising the type of business and products
involved in the industry and their current performance in the market. The report has analyzed
that the revenue and growth of the retailing industry of Australia are declining which is
majorly impacting the market players like David Jones, Kmart, Target Australia, etc. The

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changing market trend that is advanced technology has impacted the performance of
traditional offline businesses.

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References
Bhasin, H. (2019) Marketing Mix Of Target – Target Marketing Mix [Online]. Available
from https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-mix-target/ [Accessed 29 August 2019]
Carver, C. (2017) The Future of Retail [Online]. Available from
https://business.nab.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-future-of-retail-September-
2017.pdf [Accessed 29 August 2019]
Duvall, T. (2018) Future of retail in Australia [Online]. Available from
https://home.kpmg/au/en/home/insights/2018/04/bernard-salt-next-5-years-retail-future-
australia.html [Accessed 29 August 2019]
EuroMonitor (2019) Retailing in Australia [Online]. Available from
https://www.euromonitor.com/retailing-in-australia/report [Accessed 29 August 2019]
IBIS World (2019a) Department Stores - Australia Market Research Report [Online].
Available from https://www.ibisworld.com.au/industry-trends/market-research-reports/retail-
trade/other-store-based-retailing/department-stores.html [Accessed 29 August 2019]
IBIS World (2019b) Discount Variety Stores - Australia Market Research Report [Online].
Available from https://www.ibisworld.com.au/industry-trends/specialised-market-research-
reports/consumer-goods-services/discount-variety-stores.html [Accessed 29 August 2019]
Lamb, C.W., Hair, J.F., and McDaniel, C.D. (2010) MKTG 4 1st ed. U.S: Cengage Learning.
MBA Skool (2019) Kmart Marketing Mix (4Ps) Strategy [Online]. Available from
https://www.mbaskool.com/marketing-mix/services/17701-kmart.html [Accessed 29 August
2019]

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Prabhu, T.L. (2019) Retail Management: An Effective Management Strategy for Retail Store
Managers 3rd ed. India: Prabhu Thankaraju.
Simon Banks (2014) Drivers of Change: Retail Industry Trends in Australia [Online].
Available from https://www.powerretail.com.au/technology/australian-retail-industry-trends/
[Accessed 29 August 2019]
Target (2018) Our History [Online]. Available from
https://www.target.com.au/company/about-us/our-history [Accessed 29 August 2019]
The Conversation (2018) What’s really driving the future of retail? [Online]. Available from
https://theconversation.com/whats-really-driving-the-future-of-retail-100518 [Accessed 29
August 2019]
Videtic, K.M., and Steele, C.W. (2015) Perry's Department Store: A Buying Simulation 4th
ed. USA: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Woolworths Holdings Limited (2014) Woolworths South Africa To Acquire David Jones To
Create A Leading Southern Hemisphere Retailer [Online]. Available from
https://www.woolworthsholdings.co.za/woolworths-south-africa-to-acquire-david-jones-to-
create-a-leading-southern-hemisphere-retailer/ [Accessed 29 August 2019]