MOVING BEYOND VISUAL MERCHANDISING AT HYPERMARKET: A PRACTICE-BASED VIEW OF PRACTITIONERS

Abstract

Intense competition in retail markets has encouraged hypermarket retailers and product manufacturers to use various marketing tools and efforts in attracting consumers to purchase their products in the store. Visual merchandising is also utilized by retailers to create competitive advantage that other retailers might not have. Although visual merchandising has been applied and practiced in various retail store especially in supermarket, fashion, apparel, and department store, the in-depth analysis of what actually takes place in strategy formulating, planning and implementation visual merchandising at hypermarket should be carried out for further understanding from practitioners’ perspective. The main research objective of this study is to explore and understand the visual merchandising practices and its dimension particularly in hypermarket. Qualitative research was performed as a preliminary study for this research. Therefore, in-depth interviews with the practitioners that included managers and executives from Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) manufacturers, and hypermarket retailers were conducted to have more complete understanding of visual merchandising and its practices in the hypermarket. The research results show that hypermarket retailers and product manufacturers clearly recognize the important role of visual merchandising and its dimension in attracting consumer to browse the products in hypermarkets that lead to consumer impulse buying behavior. However, they also address some issues pertaining to visual merchandising. This paper summarizes relevant literature and presents a proposed framework to facilitate the practitioners and academicians as well as for future scholarly exploration in understanding the visual merchandising practices from hypermarket context.