Things have changed in the world of merchandising. Driven by the ascendancy of marketing, the proliferation of product information channels, and advances in computing power, merchants can now do in minutes at the push of a button what used to take hours of writing, data entry and manual review.

However, the state of this merchandising union remains paradoxical, and our most recent Merchandising Report, Modern Merchandising: Managing Complexity With New Tools And Techniques, aims to shed light on this new set of issues.

Here are some of the key findings of the report:

• In the past few years, we’d seen a significant surge in concern over underperforming inventory, no doubt driven by continued unstable economic conditions. This year, however, inventory concerns fall behind issues of pleasing the consumer: namely, understanding consumer preferences, innovating quickly, and retailers’ self-awareness that their reliance on promotions is ultimately eroding their brands. Some very interesting differences emerge by retailers’ performance, as well. We examine them in the Business Challenges section.
• Retailers continue to use price as their primary merchandising lever, but the number looking to improve sell-through with both optimization and localization technologies continues to rise. Yet at the same time, the bloom seems to be falling off the rose of other technologies. Find out what they are in the Opportunities section.
• As it relates to Organizational Inhibitors, the departments which need to be in line most when it comes to merchandising – Marketing, Supply Chain and Stores – are working at cross purposes. Retailers are aware of this, yet so far, have been unable to remedy the situation. Until this organizational friction gets resolved, all other inhibitors become just that much more daunting, and rightfully so.
• And in the Technology Enablers section of the report, retailers reveal a hyper-awareness that many of the legacy technologies they’ve been using for years are in dire need of a refresh. However, some very interesting things emerge when we look at just how differently the best performers view merchandising technologies in the first place.