Retail Merchandising

Name: Retail Merchandising
Rating: 4.3 (61 reviews)

How does Retail merchandising fit into the World of Retailing

Created byFaissal Kalnad

Last updated 10/2025

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Fundamentals of retail merchandising
The Merchandising Cycle
Process steps in Retail merchandise planning
Fundamentals of Retail space planning
Different types of Retail Analytics

Course content

8 sections • 25 lectures • 3h 5m total length

Introduction to Retail4:53
Retail spans online and offline channels—from stores and websites to social networks—driving about 30% of the world economy and expanding through mobile apps and live stream retailing.
Introduction to the Course3:45
Explore the fundamentals of product merchandising, its cycle from planning to selling, and how merchandisers drive assortment, quantity, and timing for both physical and digital retail.

What is Retail Product Merchandising6:05
Define merchandising as delivering the relevant product at the right place, time, and price across channels. Learn how digital and physical retail, sell-through, margin, and profit drive merchandising objectives.
Is Merchandising an Art or a Science?6:23
Explore whether merchandising is an art or a science by examining how pricing, consumer behavior, and geography influence decisions, and how data science now strengthens both elements.
The Merchandising Cycle4:13
Explore the merchandising cycle, a perpetual five-group framework—planning, sourcing and costing, inbound logistics, in-season services like space management and markdowns, and analytics—to deliver products to the shop.
Merchandising Cycle
Art and Science

Introduction to Merchandise Planning4:04
Explore how planning defines in advance what needs to be done and who is needed, guiding merchandising cycle to maximize sales and profitability and minimize leftover stock through forecast-driven decisions.
Strategic Plans8:42
Explore how merchandising strategic plans guide retail success through store, marketing, product, and trading strategies, from external analysis to action plans and resource allocation.
Financial Plans12:12
Forecast future sales, margins, and inventory through the sales, margin, and stock plans, using internal and external factors and models like time series, trend analysis, regression, and markdown considerations.
Product Plans9:53
Explore how retailers use option plans, range plans, assortment plans, and product plans to translate attributes and price points into store and online quantities and phased adoption.
Planning Dimensions14:00
Explore planning dimensions by product, location and channel, and by time frame, to shape stock and sales plans. Compare top-down, bottom-up and middle-out approaches for balanced merchandising.
type of Plan
Margin Plans

Introduction to Buying1:46
Explore the buying function within the merchandising cycle, covering sourcing and costing of merchandise. Learn how merchandisers, buying teams, and the supply chain influence procurement across various business models.
Sourcing8:55
Explore how sourcing links to merchandising and affects product availability and margins, and review models like franchising and contract manufacturing, make-or-buy criteria including reliability, cost, quality, speed, and sustainability.
Costing9:04
Costing determines the cost of goods sold, including materials, labor, infrastructure, transport, and import costs. Sourcing options, volume, and pricing methods shape margins, including selling price percentage or cost-plus.
Sourcing
Costing

Introduction to moving products3:28
Examine how moving products transfers stock from factories to shoppers, shaping the merchandise function. Compare push and demand-driven models and digital transformation for inventory reduction and timely delivery.
Inbound - Getting Products into the business7:08
Analyze inbound processes to move products from supplier to the business, focusing on speed to market, cost to market, mode of transport, payment terms, and working capital.
Storage of Products8:54
Storage decisions guard inventory value, balancing obsolete stock and perishables, and how warehouses and distribution centers enable just-in-time, omni-channel fulfillment from stores to shoppers.
Distribution of products to stores and shoppers10:55
Allocate products to stores and shoppers through allocation and replenishment, ensuring stock meets demand and availability. Profile stores by attributes to tailor life cycles and display levels.
Storiage
Product Lifecycle

Introduction to Selling2:29
Learn how merchandising enables profitable selling by keeping relevant stock available to maximize sales and margin, and how agile, in-season execution follows pre-season planning through space management and reporting.
Space Management10:43
Master space management by balancing physical and digital store space to maximize profitability, attract shoppers, market the product, and showcase the brand through test-driven layout decisions.
Trading from a Merchandising perspective10:34
Trading from a merchandising perspective emphasizes adapting long-range plans to real selling conditions, addressing slower or faster sales, delivery delays, stockouts, competitive activity, and leveraging visual merchandising and promotions.
Markdowns11:47
Learn how markdowns adjust prices to manage inventory and sales plans, differentiating permanent versus temporary markdowns and their effects on margins and seasonal clearances.
Trading
Markdowns

Introduction to Merchandise analytics4:12
Retail merchandising analytics centers on data-driven insights to refine the offer for shoppers, plan for the future, and build actionable insights by interpreting metrics and avoiding analysis paralysis.
Quantitative Analytics10:24
Explore quantitative analytics in retail merchandising by analyzing numbers, ratios, and KPIs such as best sellers, ABC analysis, sell-through, and store performance to optimize plan, buy, and move decisions.
Qualitative Analytics8:12
Explore how qualitative analytics complements quantitative analysis by using focus groups, SWOT, and social media insights to understand motivations and guide planning and selling decisions in retail merchandising.
Quantitative Analysis
Qualitative Analysis

Requirements

none

Description

Retail Merchandising is part of a crucial engine of retail, that works in the background to bring the products to the store. Merchandising is the retail function responsible for planning, selecting, and deciding which products sell in which stores.

The merchandising teams collaborates with the retail operations, marketing, and supply chain teams to make this happen.

In this course, we would provide you with the fundamentals of what is merchandising. We look at the level one of the merchandising process steps as part of the merchandising cycle. We also look at the second level of the merchandising process by breaking down the various process various steps in the merchandising cycle. In some cases, we will also delve into the third level of process steps. The course tries to simplify the various complexities around the merchandising process.

The course would provide an understanding of how the merchandising function fits in with some of the other functions of retailing. Merchandising in a way is also Stock/Inventory management. Almost all aspects of managing inventory are in one way or another related to merchandising

Merchandising varies from retailer to retailer, based on their business model. There are few global standards with regards to merchandising. We would try to cover the most common best practices of inventory management in the course

Please note that, this is not a course on visual merchandising. Visual merchandising is the art of displaying the products on the shop floor.

Who this course is for:

Retail managers, buyers, merchandise planner, allocator, merchandise controller, category manager , merchandisers.
any other retail function or person, who would like to understand the process of planning for products that are sold at a store online and offline

Retail Merchandising

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction2 lectures • 9min