Merchandising
As a Merchandiser, you are responsible for forecasting and delivering the forward planning of your department. Furthermore, you are required to deliver sales in order to meet your company's required commercial targets. We also recognize that your role may include or overlap with a Marketing role therefore tasks such as creating search synonyms and promotions are also important.
Merchandising responsibilities may include:
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Range planning
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Collaborating with buyers to achieve marketable ranges, and managing the performance of your ranges throughout the season
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Analyzing sales information
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Producing sales projections
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Formulating range strategy, utilizing relevant performance data to support your proposals
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Managing profit performance through limiting risk, maximizing profit and managing departmental sales performance to achieve bottom line results
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Helping with promotions and advertising campaigns
NetSuite has all the merchandising tools you need in order to successfully meet these demands. From core features such as Merchandise Hierarchy, Promotions, and Searchandising, to website applications such as Correlated Items or Best Sellers.
Let's imagine you have a new product ready to launch. What are the tasks required to help you successfully launch the product and then monitor the performance of your new product? We can take a look at how you can do all of this in NetSuite.
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First of all, the product needs to be configured in NetSuite:
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It will be added to the product inventory. For more information, see Inventory Management.
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You will also want to set it up to appear on your website. Detailed instructions are available in the Item Availability topic.
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You can also use storefront product tools to add Item Images, assign the item to a Commerce Categories, set up SuiteCommerce Product Reviews, and more.
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You will want your customers to be able to find the new product on your website. There are several things you could do here to ensure your product is visible on your website:
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You can set up search synonyms to ensure it is discoverable. For more information, see Search Synonyms.
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You can use Storefront Merchandising Tools extensions to present the new product to customers while they shop on your website, such as Correlated and Related Items, Best Sellers, or Featured Product.
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You can also monitor activity related to orders of your new product on your website with storefront order features. These include Quantity Pricing to encourage upselling, and Product Lists or Save For Later which provide an indication of the popularity of your product and also encourage sales.
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In order to analyze sales information and produce sales projections, you will need detailed reports, organized by product categories. To set these up you can create a merchandise hierarchy and assign items to it. For more information, see Merchandise Hierarchy.
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Finally, you could create promotions to incentivize your customers to buy the product. For more information, see Promotions
Merchandising Features
The following merchandising features are omni-channel and support Web, In-Store, Order Management, and Email.
Manage the planning, purchasing and tracking stages of your product lifecycle. Merchandise Hierarchy provides a useful tool that helps you analyze sales, purchase and inventory data that is rolled up by hierarchy categories.
Motivate your customers to purchase products in higher quantities by offering various types of promotions or discounts, including Item, Fixed Price Item, Order, Shipping, and Free Gift promotions. Promotions can help you to move out-of-date stock, increase sales, and reward valuable clients. With SuitePromotions, you can also combine promotions on the same transaction and automatically apply eligible promotions.
Powerful merchandising search capabilities, that help your customers quickly find the items that they are looking for with minimum navigation. Commerce Merchandising provides everything you need to enhance the item search capabilities for your website to ensure your customers find the merchandise you want them to find.
Merchandising Storefront Features
The following features are specifically designed for storefront application, helping you manage your merchandise directly on your website.
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Storefront products - manage and configure your merchandise on your website:
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Storefront orders - Encourage sales and upselling of your merchandise on your website:
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Storefront Marketing - Promote selected merchandise on your website: