Reading modern newspapers and magazines, listening to news, you can often hear the newfangled word of foreign origin - "retail". In fact, the meaning of this business term is not at all difficult to understand, and almost every adult deals with retailers day after day.
Retail: what is it, and "where did it go from?"
The word "retail" is borrowed, i.e. came to us from abroad. This is a Russified version of the English retail, which means “retail trade, sale of goods or services to the end consumer”. By the way, the spelling "retail" is incorrect, it is more correct to write this word through the letter "and" - as you hear in the English transcription.
Markets, street bazaars, etc., traditional for any country in the world, can be considered the predecessors of modern retail. These are the prototypes of the so-called retail centers of our days.
Thus, retail is a collection of all methods, techniques and tools for bringing goods and services to the final, retail consumer. Accordingly, a retailer is a company, firm, legal entity or individual entrepreneur that is engaged in the retail sale of goods and the provision of services. Among the most obvious and understandable to most ordinary people examples of retail organizations are such trade brands as X5 Retail Group, Auchan, Metro, etc.
Retail as a sector of the modern economy
Despite the fact that retailers are engaged in the sale of goods to the end consumer, individuals, today the scale of retail trade in Russia and around the world is comparable in turnover to the wholesale trade.
Modern retail strives to serve as many retail consumers of goods as possible with the least possible labor and time costs. This becomes possible thanks to special retail technologies, the implementation of which can be tracked using the example of self-service supermarkets, as well as payment terminals and ATMs.
Huge shopping malls, or malls, as they are commonly called today, are modern retail centers. Examples of these are the Mega complexes in different cities of Russia, Greenwich in Yekaterinburg, TSUM in Moscow, etc.
A striking feature of retail is a wide variety of goods and services accumulated in one place. At the same time, in any direction of retail, whether it is the sale of food, clothing, banking services, etc. there is a focus on consumers of economy class, middle class, luxury, deluxe and premium classes. According to this gradation, all offered goods and services are also divided.
The scale of modern retail companies can reach gigantic proportions. Thus, the turnover of the American trade network Wal-Mart is 2.5 times higher than the turnover of the diversified corporation General Electric.
