Nordstrom Company is an upscale departmental store situated in the United States, which is retail in nature, which initially dealt with shoe products. Currently, the company has expanded its retail business and is dealing with clothing, ornaments, jewelry, electronic accessories, cosmetics, and in some locations house equipments. Their main headquarters and the flagship chain stores situated in Downtown Seattle, Washington. Like other retailers, the company focuses mainly on meeting the customers’ needs. The company’s management believes that the great asset of the company is the customer. The company has put in place the strategies, which aim at sustaining the existing and attracting new customers.
The company also works hard to ensure the retail business expand to other market potential places. This means like other companies Nordstrom believes on expansion of business opportunities by exploring new markets. The company also believes in giving their staff the necessary training required in serving their customers. Like other retailers, the company is devoting its time on the feedback from customers from different retail regions so as to know the customers’ preference and act to their demand. Like other companies, Nordstrom utilizes information technology to improve their services to customers and manage their stores effectively in all regions. The company shares these characteristics with companies such as Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue (Romeo, 2005).
The Nordstrom’s service is regarded as the best among the retail companies. With their strong business approaches, which are anchored on, “greed on love” the company entirely focuses satisfying the customer’s needs. The company believes that the longtime relevance in the market is creating a healthy relationship with the customers. The salespersons at Nordstrom Company make sure that their customers’ demands are perfectly made. The salespersons industriousness comes out when one of them was offering individual attention to the one-legged woman who wanted one shoe illustrates the self-service level of the company. The level of full service a situation where the salespersons assist customers in locating products, which are not within, their shelves, and the frequent exchange strategies that have no query to inquire the customer on the returns issues. A store, which is the, opposite of the services offered by the Nordstrom, is the Wal-Mart. It is easier to differentiate Nordstrom and Wal-Mart by looking at their differences in terms of service delivery. Nordstrom Company has few computer technologies and related IT advancement as compared to Wal-Mart Company, which has the, world best computerized retail system. Wal-Mart operates on full service basis to their customers while Nordstrom focuses mostly on the self-service technique to their customers (Spector, 2005).
The six components of the Nordstrom retail mix include product, location, advertising, price, presentation, and personnel. The company is located in Washington thus; it enjoys strong customer base. Nordstrom Company has 157 stores in 27 states, and they are planning to open more in other 19 locations, which will expand to Boston and Ohio. In the promotion, of their products, the company focuses on online advertising to meet their customer’s demands, but the company does not rely majorly on promotions. The company’s products are of high quality, style, and color where the customers will have a variety in choosing their products. Since the company believes on their customers, the company believe that their pricing should have integrity in relation to customers’ and company’s satisfaction (Romeo, 2005).
The company in presenting its products always chooses the right products to display in the stores. The most influential retail mix among the six is the personnel within the Nordstrom Company. The employees are highly motivated are honesty in the provision of services to their customers. Patrick McCarthy describes the kind of service in the company as heroic one and the standard set in the company should always be the best to meet their customers’ needs. The personnel in the company always build excellent rapport with customers and always focus on the customers needs without divided attention (Romeo, 2005).
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The principle challenge to the company is the barriers in the sales channels which restricts sales prospects in the market. The customers according Nordstrom President, is that the those who bought the company’s merchandise products online, the companies statistics shows that the same customers will not return to the stores. The problem was that customers who never found the products in retail stores could not find the same product online. This became a challenge to the company and the company aims at solving this problem by providing “seamless “shopping experience in all the retail stores which can take the form mail order, online, or in-store. This will ensure that the customer gets the products in either the retail stores or online (Spector, 2005).
Nordstrom believes the competition the company is facing; arise from the companies providing the same products. The competitors are using large amounts of resources in advertising their products, which Nordstrom Company, admits they are not spending such amount. Moreover, the company having been successful in posting $8.6 billion in sales the previous year, the company has a duty of sustaining the growth despite the high competitive nature of the retailers (Romeo, 2005).
References
Romeo. (2005). Business's most wanted: The top 10 book of corporate greed, eccentric
entrepreneurs, and management oddities. London: Potomac Books, Inc.
Spector, R. (2005). The Nordstrom way to customer service excellence: A handbook for
implementing great service in your organization. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons
press.
