A retailer or shop is a business that presents a selection of goods or services and offers to sell them to customers for money or other goods. Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. In some contexts it may be considered a leisure activity as well as an economic one.
The shopping experience can range from delightful to terrible, based on a variety of factors including how the customer is treated, convenience, and mood.
The shopping experience can also be influenced by other shoppers. For example, research from a field experiment found that male and female shoppers who were accidentally touched from behind by other shoppers left a store earlier than people who had not been touched and evaluated brands more negatively, resulting in the Accidental Interpersonal Touch effect.
According to a 2000 report, in the U.S. state of New York, women purchase 80% of all consumer goods and influence 80% of health-care decisions.
"Window shopping" is a term referring to the browsing of goods by a consumer with no intent to purchase, either as a recreational activity or to plan a later purchase.
In ancient Rome, there was Trajan's Market with tabernae that served as retailing units. Shopping lists are known to be used by Romans as one was discovered by Hadrian's wall dated back to 75–125 AD and written for a soldier.
Fairs and markets have a long history that started when humans felt the desire to exchange goods and services. People would shop for goods at a weekly market in nearby towns. Then shops began to be permanently established. Shops were specialized, e.g. a bakery, a butchery, a grocer. Then supermarkets appeared.
There have been three major phases in the shopping / trading world in the 20th century. In a way, these link up into a full circle.
A larger commercial zone can be found in many cities, called a "downtown" in the United States or in Arab cities, souks. Shopping hubs, or shopping centers, are collections of stores; that is a grouping of several businesses.
Typical examples include shopping malls, town squares, flea markets and bazaars.
Stores are divided into multiple categories of stores which sell a selected set of goods or services. Usually they are tiered by target demographics based on the disposable income of the shopper. They can be tiered from cheap to pricey.
Some shops sell secondhand goods. Often the public can also sell goods to such shops. In other cases, especially in the case of a nonprofit shops, the public donates goods to these shops, commonly known as thrift stores in the United States or charity shops in the United Kingdom. In give-away shops goods can be taken for free. In antique shops, the public can find goods that are older and harder to find. Sometimes people are broke and borrow money from a pawn shop using an item of value as collateral. College students are known to resell books back though college textbook bookstores. Old used items are often distributed though surplus stores.
Many shops are part of a shopping center that carry the same trademark (company name) and logo using the same branding, same presentation, and sell the same products but in different locations. The shops may be owned by one company, or there may be a franchising company that has franchising agreements with the shop owners often found in relation to restaurant chains.
Various types of retail stores that specialize in the selling of goods related to a theme include bookstores, boutiques, candy shops, liquor stores, gift shops, hardware stores, hobby stores, pet stores, pharmacies, sex shops and supermarkets.
Other stores such as big-box stores, hypermarkets, convenience stores, department stores, general stores, dollar stores sell a wider variety of products not horizontally related to each other.
Home mail delivery systems and modern technology (such as television, telephones, and the Internet), in combination with electronic commerce and business-to-consumer electronic commerce systems, allow consumers to shop from home. There are three main types of home shopping: mail or telephone ordering from catalogs; telephone ordering in response to advertisements in print and electronic media (such as periodicals, TV and radio); and online shopping. Online shopping has completely redefined the way people make their buying decisions; the Internet provides access to a lot of information about a particular product, which can be looked at, evaluated, and comparison-priced at any given time. Online shopping allows the buyer to save the time and expense, which would have been spent traveling to the store or mall.
Sometimes peddlers and ice cream trucks pass through neighborhoods offering services and goods. Also, neighborhood shopping takes place through various garage sales found in United States.
The party plan is a method of marketing products by hosting a social event, using the event to display and demonstrate the product or products to those gathered, and then to take orders for the products before the gathering ends.
Most business have shopping hours but other are open around the clock. Some nations regulate the operation of businesses for religious reasons and do not allow shopping on particular days or dates.
Shopping frenzies are periods of time where a burst of spending occurs-typically near holidays in the United States, with Christmas shopping being the biggest shopping spending season, starting as early as October and continuing until after Christmas.
Some religions regard such spending seasons as being against their faith and dismiss the practice. Many question the over-commercialization and the response by stores that downplay the shopping season often cited in the Christmas controversy or War on Christmas.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) also highlights the importance of back-to-school shopping for retailers which comes second behind holiday shopping, when buyers often buy clothing and school supplies for their children. In 2006, Americans spend over $17 billion on their children, according to a NRF survey.
The pricing technique used by most retailers is cost-plus pricing. This involves adding a markup amount (or percentage) to the retailers' cost. Another common technique is manufacturers suggested list pricing. This simply involves charging the amount suggested by the manufacturer and usually printed on the product by the manufacturer.
In Western countries, retail prices are often called psychological prices or odd prices: a little less than a round number, e.g. $6.95. In Chinese societies, prices are generally either a round number or sometimes some lucky number. This creates price points.
Often, prices are fixed and price discrimination can lead to a bargaining situation often called haggling, a negotiation about the price. Economists see this as determining how the transaction's total economic surplus will be divided between consumers and producers. Neither party has a clear advantage because the threat of no sale exists, in which case the surplus would vanish for both.
When shopping online, it can be more difficult to negotiate price given that you are not directly interacting with a sales person. Some consumers use price comparison websites to find the best price and/or to make a decision about who or where to buy from to save money.
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