Retail Product Management, 2nd edition

Citation

Hamlin, R. (2007), "Retail Product Management, 2nd edition", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 41 No. 11/12, pp. 1545-1546. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560710821297

Retail Product Management examines the process of product management from a retailer's perspective. In doing so, it recognises the fact that retailers, rather than suppliers of both goods and services, now occupy a dominant position in many markets in the developed world. For this reason many of the strategic decisions that were previously made by suppliers are now made by retailers, and these decisions are influenced by the differing environment and perspective of the “retail product manager”.

The book is laid out in the manner of a formal text, suitable for supporting a class‐delivered course on the subject, complete with learning objectives, exercises and review questions. The highly structured nature of the text assists the teacher in this role, but it does come at a certain price in readability and in depth concept development from the professional practitioner point of view.

It covers the subject in four major sections. In the first section: “Understanding retail product management”, the concept of retail product management is defined. The author is careful to keep brand management, and its retail equivalent, as a secondary issue, and this subordination is continued through the remainder of the text. The role of the retail product manager and the various management structures within which they may operate are then introduced. The section then concludes with a discussion of the mechanics of category management. The second section “The retail product management process: from conception to delivery” looks at both strategic and tactical aspects of the purchasing process, from determining the range and types of products to be offered, to managing buyer supplier relationships, new product development and issues of inventory and stock management. The third section “The retail product management process: implementation and evaluation” looks at the management of the retail point of sales, and issues relating to point of sales communications both on and off the individual products concerned. The final section “Retail product management applications”, looks at two separate issues; retail product management in areas and markets where the standard retail store is not the point of sale, and retail product management in an international context.

The text is well supported by examples, figures and diagrams. Some of the illustrations of the buying structures to be found in large retail organisations are particularly valuable. The material contained within this book has considerable potential as background colour to the increasingly crucial point that suppliers do not have it all their own way in the modern marketplace. Given this, for a supplier product manager to plan product strategies, without considering the equally powerful retail product manager that stands between them and their target consumer, is to plan for failure.

As with any text that does not sit within a well‐established area, it introduces some potentially controversial concepts. For example, the concept of the “category lifecycle” is strongly pursued. I am not convinced that this concept is universally or even commonly valid. I have no doubt that categories that are defined by specific sets of products do display a technical solution type “lifecycle” of sorts. However, many categories are defined by specific sets of consumer needs, rather than by solutions to them, and such need sets do not necessarily display lifecycle‐type patterns of development. For example, the “disposable blade razor” category may well die, but it is hard to see the “male personal hygiene” category, within which it is placed, doing likewise. Therefore, retail product managers would have to be very sure which type of category they were dealing with before they applied this “category lifecycle” concept to their decision processes.

This text is positioned within an area of practice where there are very few other texts to choose from. For this reason it has tried to spread itself very broadly, and in the latter stages it can be hard to distinguish it from a retailing text. For the same reason, the author has had to make a decision as to whether to address either how we undertake retail product management, or why we should do so. I think that, rightly, she has taken a strong line on this, and has examined the mechanics of retail product management, rather than the motives for doing so and its current and future strategic implications. For this reason, readers who are, for example, expecting an in depth analysis of the implications of category management on products, brands, retailers, suppliers and innovation will be disappointed. This particular “can of worms” is shown to us, but like many others, it is not opened – this will have to wait for a future work.

In conclusion, Retail Product Management is a nicely written and presented text, in an important and developing area, which would find a worthwhile home on the shelves of any marketing educator as a valuable resource, not only to those who are in the business of teaching retail product management, but the very much larger number of marketing educators who deliver courses on “mainstream” supplier orientated product and brand management courses.