How does Category Management create an Amazing Shopping Experience?

Category management is a disciplined approach to managing a product category under specific fashion designs. It is a concept based on trading and procuring; the particular fashion is distinguished into several categories and groups.

Brian F. Harris first devised category management, and this management system is widely used in most organizations.

An example of category management is a shop with a comprehensive collection according to fashion trends. It makes different sections for every category, like a section for bottoms, a section for tops, a section for kaftans and much more. It makes it easier for workers and buyers, to improve the shopping experience.

How to implement category management?

Implementation of category management involves several things like defining the category, category role, tracking performance, setting benchmarks, planning, tactics, implementation, and review. To understand these steps in a better way, here's a brief information.

Parameters

Setting the parameters and defining the fashion category is crucial in implementing category management. It is based on customers' behavior and demand according to specific apparel trends and seasons. 

Category role

Every fashion category has its role; this can be considered from the sales perspective. It is crucial to think about the importance as well as the impact of everything.

Tracking

Tracking performance will let the company understand and work better in the following steps. The performance can be tracked by comparing it to the other categories within the global fashion market.

Setting objectives and benchmarks

It is always essential to set objectives and benchmarks in the beginning. It lets the fashion designing company work on those specific goals and try to achieve them. Sales, market share, and volume are better places to start.

Plan

Before taking any step, it is important to Plan. Planning plays an essential role in everything that is practiced, especially when it is regarding business growth. One needs to plan market strategies, tactics, and other stuff before implementing it.

Category tactics

Bringing the strategies into the market might be easier but keeping them in motion requires a lot of tactics. The tactics would help improve all the 4 Ps of category management.

Implementation

Once all the steps are followed, right from defining the parameters, planning, setting the strategies, and other steps. The time to implement these steps in practice will let the company explore much more stuff.

Review

Category management is not just a procedure, but a cycle; reviewing the overall process and result will be helpful. Based on reviews, garment designs and quality can be modified to achieve better and more desirable results.

Benefits of category management

Category management has been helping the overall market understand the sales and customers and provide them with their requirements. Category management creates a fantastic shopping experience both for the customers as well as for the sellers. Let's know about it in detail.

Meeting the needs

Category management aims at meeting the needs of the customers. Meeting the needs makes the customer feel satisfied, and what can be a better thing than this?

Providing fine cloth quality, various designs, an affordable collection range, and everything a customer might need is the most significant task for every clothing company. And category management helps the company grow with its sales and customers.

Insights

Category management lets the staffs understand the category insights. It might include different data based on customer demand, sales of the products, and much more. With the help of insights, the company can work on preparing the collection they have, the stock they might need, the most selling designs, the least selling garments, which design customer wants and much more.

Understanding

Category management helps in understanding the customers in a much better way. With the help of insights, the company gets to know more about their customers, which lets them improve their recent collection, fulfill customers' demands, improve their sales and much more.

Increased sales

Category management makes a lot of things clear in the eyes of retailers, after which they have a clear vision regarding satisfying their customers and improving sales. A simple understanding of customer demands, strategies, planning and implementation can help grow sales. Understanding where they went wrong or correct and working on it undoubtedly improves the sale. The substantial improvement in sales eventually results in higher ROI and increased growth rates. 

Increase in the hunger

The strategies, planning, and tactics to satisfy customers increase their hunger for specific designs or collections. For example, if the company provides an offer on the least sold products, there are chances that soon it will be bought by a few customers. Or it can also happen when the company has to clear the stock and then provide offers and sales, increasing the hunger in the customer. If they were thinking of buying one, then it might happen that they will end up buying two because the offer was to buy two and get one free.

Easy access

The most important about category management is that it makes the products easily accessible by the staff and the customers. In this case, things are more organized, and the retailer need not run around and assist every customer.

Win-win situation

Category management lets the company enjoy a win-win situation along with its customers. It is a more organized way of selling and buying products and is very much manageable. 

What are the 4 Ps of category management?

Category management has 4Ps; Product, placement, price and promotion. The P's helps the category manager in ensuring the overall work. Let's know about this in brief.

Product

Under the category of 4 P's, the product arrives on the top of all. It lets the manager make decisions regarding the purchase of the garments by looking into what is bought, whether it is suitable for sale, etc. All these details work according to the market trends and seasonal demands, which drives more customers to purchase specific designs. 

Price

After the purchase of specific designs, it is ensured that the pricing is done appropriately. Every fashion category needs to be priced as per its value and demand. Hence, the manager needs to look into it closely. Prices of similar garments can vary according to market trends and demand. 

Placement

Once the products are bought and priced, they need to be placed into a specific category highlighting their quality and design. Product placement needs to be done to make it easier for fashion designers, staff, and customers to shop for the product.

Promotion

After all the steps are done, the manager focuses on fashion advertisements and promotions. Different tactics are used to promote a particular item providing offers, sales and much more. 

Conclusion

These details mention the importance of category management of specific fashion for building a substantial shopping experience. Category management was created to create hunger in the customers, understand the customers, have detailed information on sales through insights, satisfy customers' demands, increase sales and much more. 

There are various tools used for category management like Assorted Optimisation Software, Planogram Software, Promotion Planning Software, Retail analytics software and many others.

Fashinza has been guiding several people worldwide with a basic understanding of the market, its understanding, customer satisfaction, and how to increase sales. Stay tuned for more informational blogs on fashion, clothing, apparel, and the market. At our company, you can enjoy unique offerings such as direct access to suppliers, carefully vetted suppliers, lean inventory, data-driven fabric pre-booking and much more.