Retail Therapy : Making Strategic Relationships Work

Designing a successful retail business depends on relationships with four groups of people: customers, shareholders, employees and suppliers. This book takes you inside those strategic relationships and shows you how to redesign your business to get them right. Don't let the humour fool you, there are ground-breaking ideas here. Highlights include a new theory of brands which shows how customer loyalty and service can be transformed. Insights into supply chain structure reveal a path to a new level of excellence. Job satisfaction is also given a complete overhaul for the new century. In each case the solution seems paradoxical - by finding a way to let the human element back into strategy we can actually increase its objectivity and extend its reach. Combining hardcore retail experience with state of the art theory and a steady flow of humour, this is the retail strategy book you've been waiting for. It's infectiously readable, relentlessly illuminating and irreverently funny - it's also the key to successful retail.
Designing a successful retail business depends on relationships with four groups of people: customers, shareholders, employees, and suppliers. This book takes you inside those strategic relationships and shows you how to redesign your business to get them right. Highlights include a new theory of brands which shows how customer loyalty and service can be transformed. Insights into supply chain structure reveal a path to a new level of excellence. Job satisfaction is also given a complete overhaul for the new century. In each case the solution seems paradoxical - by finding a way to let the human element back into strategy we can actually increase its objectivity and extend its reach.
"Highlights include a new theory of brands which shows how customer loyalty and service can be transformed. Insights into supply chain structure reveal a path to a new level of excellence. Job satisfaction is also given a complete overhaul for the new century. In each case the solution seems paradoxical - by finding a way to let the human element back into strategy we can actually increase its objectivity and extend its reach."--BOOK JACKET. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Opening remarks....Pages 1-5 Dan’s introduction....Pages 6-26 Balancing the tension between competing business aims....Pages 27-49 Planning strategic relationships....Pages 50-67 Customers and the true nature of the retail brand....Pages 68-98 Employees....Pages 99-123 Suppliers....Pages 124-165 Finance....Pages 166-196 Closing remarks....Pages 197-198 Back Matter....Pages 199-200 Traditionally retailers have focused upon internal processes to improve performance and have failed to respond to global changes and customer requirements. This text argues that designing a successful retail business depends on strategic working relationships and helps show how to get it right.