Week 5 Merchandise Management

Merchandise Classifications & Organization:

Buying Organization:

For Kinokuniya, there is one chairperson to many division managers in charge of different departments such as books, magazines, stationery, audio & visual materials, biblography, articles/news and art gallery as well!


Under books, they have different buyers for different classification of books! [Ranging from Fiction to Politics]


They have both category for kids as well as adults.

The SKUs for kids would be for books like Magic books, Fairytale and Mystery.
The SKUs for adults would be for books such as Romance & Murder.

http://www.kinokuniya.co.jp/06f/d04/2011saiyou.pdf

Merchandise Category:

A merchandise category:

Refers to an assortment of items that customers see as substitutes for each other.

Merchandise categories allow us to classify and structure the entire range of goods offered for sale by Kinokuniya (breadth and depth)

The aim of merchandise category management is the better coordination of various customer considerations at each business location (for example, stores), including elements such as variety, price structures and advertising

Category Management:
Category Management is a retailing concept in which the range of products sold by a retailer is broken down into discrete groups of similar or related products; these groups are known as product categories.

The focus is to affect the turnover of the category as whole, not just the sales of individual products.

Kinokuniya's store layout is simple and categorizes the books according to, fiction, non- fiction, and then sub categorize into smaller groups like Arts, Geography, food, movie titles, best seller, mangas, etc. They classify books for the convenience of the shoppers in the store and they advertise on the items by category.

Example:

Kinokuniya held an event called Lolita and Maid Fashion Day

Quoted from the website:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16683

"Anime And Manga Discount: Any customer who comes into Kinokuniya Bookstore at 1073 Avenue of the Americas on Saturday, June 7 wearing a Lolita or Maid dress or anime, manga, or video game cosplay will receive 10% off all anime and manga purchases."

They were giving discounts for ALL anime and manga purchases although the event was in collaboration with only Del Rey Manga

Category Captain:

NO!

From Kinokuniya's Japan Site: "まず、日本の和書の出版流通から説明します。メーカーにあたる出版社（版元とも言う）が新刊を 出版すると、それが問屋にあたる取次へと流れ、小売である書店でお客様に販売する形をとっていま
す。"

This translates that Kinokuniya does not have a category captain (a selected vendor responsible for managing a category) as the books it carries are from the publisher to the wholesaler and then to the retailer.

Therefore, there is no vendor or supplier who helps the retailer understand the consumer behaviour of buying that category of books nor does kinokuniya creates any assortment that satisfy. Therefore, Kinokuniya does not have a category captain.

http://www.kinokuniya.co.jp/06f/d04/2011saiyou.pdf

Merchandise Management Planning Processes:
Two distinct Types of Merchandise Management Systems
Staple (Basic) Merchandise Categories:

• Fiction Books


• Non-Fiction Books


• Language books
  

As fiction and non-fiction books will have a continuous demand over an extended time period as they have limited number of new product introductions and it is the most basic form of reading for book lovers.Therefore, it is in staple merchandise categories.

As Language books are hard to have new product introductions and the demand for the books are easy to forecast, having continuous replenishment hence it is in staple merchandise categories.

Fashion Merchandise Categories:

• Politics


• Comics- Manga Comics

As politics are fast moving, they are something that would be in demand for a relatively short period of time. For instance, the red blood protestors in thailand and the Obama election period. After obama was elected, the books were less popular! Hence, it is under fashion merchandise categories

As Manga comics was a trend in Japan, the continuous production of new comic books increase as more and more teenagers started to follow the trend. However, the demand for it slowly decreased as teenagers grow up to be young adults and stop reading it. Hence, it is only in demand for a relatively short time. Thus, being under fashion merchandise categories.

Done By: Stacie Tan, Cynthia Neo