gE Blog Series: Retail Week Part 1- The Ins and Outs of Retail

It's time for our readership to be rewarded with yet another blog series! This week's series will be focusing on contemporary issues in the retail industry  The topcs we'll be covering include an overview of the top global firms in the retail business, a look at the ever-so-fashionable fashion industry, consumers, and last-but-not-least, purchasing behavior, and how consumers are shopping in new, different ways.

The retail industry is one that many of us participate in nearly every single day of our lives. We are all consumers in one way or another, and that's exactly what retail does: get the goods they made or purchased from wholesalers to the consumers. There are a number of different kinds of retail establishments:
-Department stores - a large retail store organized into departments offering a variety of merchandise, and often forms the cornerstone of a mall, such as J.C. Penney's
-Discount stores - mass-merchandisers or membership warehouses, such as Wal-Mart or Costco
-Category killers - large stores that specialize in one type of merchandise, such as Home Depot
-E-tailers - retailers which sell goods online, such as Amazon
-Specialty stores - business which concentrate on one product type and sell it in a way that makes it unique, such as the The Body Shop

Traditionally, department stores, and mom-and-pops residing in shopping malls had controlled the retail industry. Today, however, as can be seen with the rapid growth of Wal-Mart, people like being able to get everything at one place, and thus do a lot of shopping at mass merchandise stores. Growing even faster than the trend of using mass merchandise stores is the use of E-tailers. Sites such as eBay and Amazon facilitate the purchase of just about anything to anyone for a reasonable price. E-tailers can also be used from the comfort of one's home, which is yet another reason they are so attractive to many consumers.

We hope that our retail series will be informative and change how you view and deal in the retail industry.  If you're looking for information focusing on retail-specific resources, check out our retail resources page! Enjoy the rest of the blog series!