According to a recent report, customer satisfaction with online service is 12% higher than satisfaction with brick-and-mortar retailers.

One of the differences is dealing with sales staff:

"Online commerce delivers convenience that is unparalleled in the offline world . . . and service quality and consistency is better because there is no unknown factor of a sales associate..."

Advertising Age has an article about how merchandising can create strong relationships with customers. While this is nothing new, it is an important concept that some retailers still are not using to their advantage.

Managing inventory is closely tied to merchandising products. Calculating inventory turns is one way of measuring the effectiveness of your merchandising and display efforts.

Here's a company, Effective Inventory Management, with a website that can help you understand and calculate inventory turns and manage your product lines more effectively. Check out this article for starters:

Your store is one big package for the products and merchandise you have inside.

It's the package that sells the merchandise.

Let's say I give you a present. Well, not really - just in your imagination. Play along, OK?

Retail merchandising is about emotion. It's about the mood or the feeling retailers create for the shopper. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I came across these two articles that are right on the money.

Visual merchandising is becoming increasingly pivotal for retail success. As retail becomes more and more competitive, shoppers have more options than ever before.

Shoppers aren't just shopping for products, they're buying experiences. The stores that put more effort into making an exciting, and emotional experience for customers, are the ones that will be successful.

Shoppers operate in four different 'shopping modes' according to a new study by Nielsen Customized Research. The four modes are: auto-pilot, variety-seeking, buzz, and bargain hunting.

The study involved grocery shoppers, but I wonder what we can learn in our own stores by watching and noticing how customers shop.

So many retailers are confused about what they are selling. It's no wonder that they then struggle with merchandising.

They think they are selling products, when in fact what they should be selling are solutions.

Need to know what's hot on in women's or children's wear in L.A.?

Inform Style Seekers distributes a detailed monthly snapshot of the L.A. retail fashion and street scene, by subscription.

If you are in the fashion business, you should already have a sense of what the trends are for the first half of the year. Designers have been looking ahead to fall and winter of 2007 for some time now.