Stores Management

Lead time in the materials management context can be defined as the time taken from indenting to procurement of a given item. In other words, it’s the time lag between the feel for and the fulfillment of a need. For the purpose of inventory analysis and management control, the process is classified as the ordering lead time and supplying lead time.
While the former represents the time taken for placement of the purchase order from the time the need for a material is first felt, the latter encompasses the supply, transportation and collection time that is apart from the connected stores’ functions of receipt, acceptance, and accounting before the procured material is ready for issue to the indentor. Lead time thus is the measurement of the material availability for use, thereby making it a pulse indicator of the materials management function. Notwithstanding the primacy of efficient management of the lead time, however, the timely fulfillment of a need depends on its timely anticipation.

The study’s research model suggests that store design and ease of shopping are associated with customer retention through a mediated pathway in which store design and ease of shopping influence perceived store satisfaction, which in turn, influences customer retention. This survey was administered to two separate clothing stores offered to either females or males (in total, 533 participants). Using structural equation modelling methodology, data was analysed to explain the interrelations among the variables in the model. The results of an empirical study of a sample of store shoppers revealed that store design and ease of shopping influence customer retention in an indirect way through customer perception of satisfaction with the store. In building store satisfaction that is centred on customer retention, store design and shopping ease differ in their relative influences. This difference is high for females, but for men as low as to be considered negligible in males. As a result, improving customers’ perceptions of store design and ease of shopping is a way to ensure store satisfaction support customer retention. The results of the study provide a new insight into the relationships by suggesting indirect effects of shopping ease and store design on consumer retention by their impacts on store satisfaction, rather than direct effects.

Keywords: satisfaction, customer retention, store design, shopping ease, brand consciousness

The olfactory is an important tool for marketers to create a positive impact on consumers. Mostly it is used in the stores by the retailers with unique fragrances. Some of them are selling their scent as a product. In this study it’s aimed to observe if this makes a difference in consumers perception; smelling the scent in stores only or smell it always in the home. Results show that scent buyers are more positive against the product, and it drives them to spend more time and money with their shopping experience.

L’art du négoce : un regard ethnographique sur le management de proximité en hypermarché

En dépit de la multiplication des formes de contrôle externe en matière de gestion au plus juste des marchandises et de la clientèle, les managers de rayon jouent aujourd’hui encore un rôle essentiel dans l’organisation au quotidien du travail. Les restructurations survenues ces deux dernières décennies au sein des entreprises de la grande distribution ont contribué à transformer les modalités d’exercice de l’encadrement au sein des hypermarchés. Les innovations techniques et organisationnelles majeures (informatisation et gestion intégrée des marchandises et de la main d’œuvre, centralisation des données, supply chain) qu’a connu ce secteur ont en effet conduit à l’enfermement progressif de l’organisation du magasin sur elle-même. Soumis à de fortes injonctions institutionnelles, les managers sont contraints à prendre davantage de risques et à en faire également prendre aux employés.


The art of business: An ethnographic approach of proximity management in  a hypermarket chain

Despite the growing number of external controls related to the just-in-time management of merchandise and customers, department managers in hypermarkets still play a key role in the everyday organization of work. The staff’s job has changed owing to the restructuring of big retail chains over the past twenty years. Major technical and organizational innovations in this sector - computerization, centralization of data, supply chain, integrated management of merchandise and labor - have led to an increasingly “closed” organization in hypermarkets. Subject to strong institutional imperatives, department managers are forced to take more risks, and to make their employees do so too.


Die Kunst des Handels : ein ethnographischer Blick auf das mitarbeiternahe Management in Verbrauchermärkten

Trotz der vielfältigen Formen externer Kontrolle, über die ein knapp kalkulierendes Management in bezug auf Warenumschlag und Kundenwerbung verfügt, spielen die Abteilungsleiter im Arbeitsalltag heute noch eine wesentliche Rolle. Die in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten durchgeführten Umstrukturierungen im Massenvertrieb haben auch eine Veränderung der Führungsmodalitäten in den Verbrauchermärkten bewirkt. Die beträchtlichen technischen und organisatorischen Innovationen (Digitalisierung und integriertes Warenumsatz- und Personalmanagement, Zentralisierung der Daten, supply chain) in diesem Sektor haben tatsächlich dazu geführt, dass die Organisation sich immer mehr auf sich selbst konzentrierte. Da die Abteilungsleiter starken institutionellen Vorgaben unterworfen sind, sind sie und mithin auch die Beschäftigten dazu gezwungen, höhere Risken auf sich zu nehmen.


El arte del negocio, una mirada etnográfica sobre la gestión de proximidad en los hipermercados

A pesar de la multiplicación de las formas de control externo en materia de gestión, de la forma más cercana posible a la mercancía y a los clientes, los responsables de los supermercados siguen desempeñando un papel esencial en la organización diaria del trabajo. Las reestructuraciones realizadas en las dos últimas décadas en las empresas de la gran distribución han contribuido a transformar las modalidades de gestión de los supermercados. Las importantes innovaciones técnicas y organizativas (informatización y gestión integrada de la mercancía y de la mano de obra, centralización de los datos, supply chain, etc.) que ha conocido este sector han llevado a que la organización de la tienda se repliegue progresivamente sobre sí misma. Debido a las órdenes institucionales, los responsables se ven obligados a asumir mayores riesgos y a hacer que sus empleados también los asuman.

Stores play a vital role in the operation of any industry; it is in direct touch with the user departments in its day-to-day activities. The most important purpose served by the stores is to provide uninterrupted service to the manufacturing division. Further, stores are often equated directly with money as money is locked up in the stores thus stores operations should be the most effective and effiency in any processing firm.this study will be carried out to determine and investigate the factors affecting effiency and effectiveness of stores operations in the tea sector.it will be descriptive research that will employ a case study survey research design. This is because the study intends to obtain an in depth understanding of the factors affecting store operations in KTDA managed factories. The study will determine and identify many other factors that contribute to the effectiveness of production department in relation to establishing lead-time observance, determining education level of employees in the stores departments, establishing, scheduling techniques and recordkeeping in the stores section.

In the past several decades, domineering influence from the western culture has played an important role in Africans abandoning their traditional foods for the more appearing western cuisines and highly refined factory foods. Unfortunately, this approach results in problems related to increase in lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, obesity, impotence in men, high blood pressure and cancer to name but a few. This problem has been largely studied and many viable solutions have been found including going back to consumption of traditional foods. Consequently, there has been much campaign and spirited debate in the media for the need to return to the consumption of African traditional foodstuffs to try to reduce the spread of the lifestyle diseases. On the same note, African communities have abandoned their traditional farming practices including food storage and warehousing practices. This turns out to be even more problematic because instead of improving their traditional food storag...

Materials management is about the functional integration of purchase, storage, and issues that involves planning and control of the material needs of an enterprise. Since all the three activities are independent, yet interdependent, they need to be harmonized for achieving overall functional efficiency. But the hitch lays in the halo of the purchase activity entailing glamorous prominence that the other two lack. This aberration is attributable to the functional characteristics of purchasing as well as to the positional prerogative the department enjoys in an organization.
Functionally, as the purchase activity involves interaction with willing vendors, the buyers come to occupy the centre stage of the materials management arena. Besides, the cerebral scope the purchase activity entails, which besides providing buyers the opportunity for the flourish of thought and expression in file-noting and letter writing also affords them an ego satisfaction the circulation of their signature in the same entails. Moreover, the purchase function being the nerve center of the materials activity, it provides the up-to-date overview of every aspect of the material position to the personnel manning it, thereby making it the most sought after by every other department. This apart, the working atmosphere of the purchase office, manned as such by relatively better qualified personnel, acquires an amount of sophistication, which imparts a sense of élan to the department.

The value addition that an efficient material management function brings to an organization though well and widely recognized, in principle, seldom in practice, conditions conducive to it are embedded in the body management that is notwithstanding the complexities of the present day business world that necessitate them, for it to serve the organizational interests the way it is capable of and destined to. Let it be stated, at the outset, that I have no pretensions, whatsoever, for being a practicing materials manager, in the stricter sense that is, or much less an expert on the subject, for my experience is limited and my exposure is peripheral, and consequently have no intention of arrogating to myself the air of an author, in this which is essentially a maiden foray to try to conceptualize the fascinating concept of materials management. Lest it should be inferred that the stray thoughts on which this exercise is based, whether worthy of attention, not to speak of one's contemplation, are common practices, if it were so, discussed at length in published articles or so prevalent as to suffer any new exposition, I may hasten to add, even at the expense of owning up my naivety, that I am no serious reader of, the so-called management journals, the medium of exchanging information and knowledge, as to be aware of the same. A share in the blame-major one if you please-for this contradiction goes to the materials personnel themselves in that their performance, or lack of it, accentuated as it is by the mounting inventories on the one hand and stock outs on the other, increasing overheads but gaping lead times, is only matched, even explained-by the organizational apprehensions in according the materials management the premier role so essential for its effective functioning. The initiative for breaking this impasse so inimical to the functional vitality of the material management rests with the personnel manning the function and the only means available to them is to improve their performance, made possible by way of systems management, so as to make an impact on the management in their quest for a rightful place at the top. For the purpose of examining the available opportunities for improving the function, material management can be broadly categorized as that which caters to mass production, that which sustains the made to order and that which serves the mechanized mining, depending on the functional features and constraints of each. MM in mass production The main offshoot and indeed the sustenance of the industrial revolution is the mass manufacturing industry, which thereby had the oldest and relatively the more streamlined of the organizational structures in general, not excluding the material management. The output though substantial quantitatively is yet limited in variety, conditioned as such by the considerations of product mix, which keeps the variables within the limits of manageable proportions. The inputs

L’art du négoce : un regard ethnographique sur le management de proximité en hypermarché En dépit de la multiplication des formes de contrôle externe en matière de gestion au plus juste des marchandises et de la clientèle, les managers de rayon jouent aujourd’hui encore un rôle essentiel dans l’organisation au quotidien du travail. Les restructurations survenues ces deux dernières décennies au sein des entreprises de la grande distribution ont contribué à transformer les modalités d’exercice de l’encadrement au sein des hypermarchés. Les innovations techniques et organisationnelles majeures (informatisation et gestion intégrée des marchandises et de la main d’œuvre, centralisation des données, supply chain) qu’a connu ce secteur ont en effet conduit à l’enfermement progressif de l’organisation du magasin sur elle-même. Soumis à de fortes injonctions institutionnelles, les managers sont contraints à prendre davantage de risques et à en faire également prendre aux employés. The art of business: An ethnographic approach of proximity management in a hypermarket chain Despite the growing number of external controls related to the just-in-time management of merchandise and customers, department managers in hypermarkets still play a key role in the everyday organization of work. The staff’s job has changed owing to the restructuring of big retail chains over the past twenty years. Major technical and organizational innovations in this sector - computerization, centralization of data, supply chain, integrated management of merchandise and labor - have led to an increasingly “closed” organization in hypermarkets. Subject to strong institutional imperatives, department managers are forced to take more risks, and to make their employees do so too. Die Kunst des Handels : ein ethnographischer Blick auf das mitarbeiternahe Management in Verbrauchermärkten Trotz der vielfältigen Formen externer Kontrolle, über die ein knapp kalkulierendes Management in bezug auf Warenumschlag und Kundenwerbung verfügt, spielen die Abteilungsleiter im Arbeitsalltag heute noch eine wesentliche Rolle. Die in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten durchgeführten Umstrukturierungen im Massenvertrieb haben auch eine Veränderung der Führungsmodalitäten in den Verbrauchermärkten bewirkt. Die beträchtlichen technischen und organisatorischen Innovationen (Digitalisierung und integriertes Warenumsatz- und Personalmanagement, Zentralisierung der Daten, supply chain) in diesem Sektor haben tatsächlich dazu geführt, dass die Organisation sich immer mehr auf sich selbst konzentrierte. Da die Abteilungsleiter starken institutionellen Vorgaben unterworfen sind, sind sie und mithin auch die Beschäftigten dazu gezwungen, höhere Risken auf sich zu nehmen. El arte del negocio, una mirada etnográfica sobre la gestión de proximidad en los hipermercados A pesar de la multiplicación de las formas de control externo en materia de gestión, de la forma más cercana posible a la mercancía y a los clientes, los responsables de los supermercados siguen desempeñando un papel esencial en la organización diaria del trabajo. Las reestructuraciones realizadas en las dos últimas décadas en las empresas de la gran distribución han contribuido a transformar las modalidades de gestión de los supermercados. Las importantes innovaciones técnicas y organizativas (informatización y gestión integrada de la mercancía y de la mano de obra, centralización de los datos, supply chain, etc.) que ha conocido este sector han llevado a que la organización de la tienda se repliegue progresivamente sobre sí misma. Debido a las órdenes institucionales, los responsables se ven obligados a asumir mayores riesgos y a hacer que sus empleados también los asuman.