What is Retailing? What is Retail?

Retail
Retail is derived from French word retaillier which means cut off a piece or to break bulk. Retail is a sale of commodities or goods in a small quality directly to the customers.

Who is a Retailer?
Retailer are those who buy goods in a large quantity from the market or a dealer and sold again in the market at lesser quantity directly to the consumers. Retail happens in the shop or store. Retailers are at the ens of supply chain. Retailers also indicates service provider services which needs larger number of individuals such as public utility services.

Retailing
A last stage in movement of goods/services to consumer. Retailing consists of all activities involved in marketing of goods/services to consumers for their personal, family or household use. Retailing is the business where an organization directly sells its products and services to an end consumer and this is for his personal use. By definition whenever an organization be it a manufacturing or a whole seller sells directly to the end consumer it is actually operating in the Retail space. This industry has traveled a long way from a humble beginning to a situation where worldwide Retail sales is more than $7 Trillion.
Retailing has played a vital role worldwide in increasing productivity across a wide range of consumer goods and services. The impact can be best felt in countries like USA, UK, Mexico, Thailand and more recently in China. Economies of countries like Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia are also heavily boosted by the Retail Industry.
It is a changing industry and old traditional ways of doing business has lost relevance nowadays. It is an industry which is heavily dependent on consumer spending. In this ecosystem consumers play the most important role. As a result of this, Retailers are continuously challenging themselves to find out ways and means of identifying customers need. They are busy in devising new strategies to have an atomic level understanding of consumer demand.