Departmental Store

Departmental stores
A departmental store is a large establishment offering a wide variety of products, classified into well-defined departments, aimed at satisfying practically every customer’s need under one roof. It has a number of departments, each one confining its activities to one kind of product. For example, there may be separate departments for toiletries, medicines, furniture, groceries, electronics, clothing and dress material. Thus, they satisfy diverse market segments with a wide variety of goods and services. It is not uncommon for a department store in the United States of America to carry ‘needle to an aeroplane’ or ‘all shopping under one roof.’ Everything from ‘a pin to an elephant’ is the spirit behind a typical departmental store. In India real departmental stores have not yet come in a big way in the retailing business. However, some stores on this line in India include ‘Akberally’ in Mumbai and ‘Spencers’ in Chennai. Some of the important features of a departmental store are as follows:
(a) A modern departmental store may provide all facilities such as restaurant, travel and information bureau, telephone booth, rest-room, etc. As such they try to provide maximum service to higher class of customers for whom price is to secondary importance.
(b) These stores are generally located at a central place in the heart of a city, which caters to a large number of customers.
(c)As the size of these stores is very large, they are generally formed as a joint stock company managed by a bored of directors. There is a managing director assisted by a general manager and several department managers;
(d) A departmental store combines both the function of retailing as well as warehousing, They purchase directing from manufacturers and operate separate warehouses. That way they help in eliminating undesirable middlemen between the producers and the customers; and
(e) They have centralized purchasing arrangements. All the purchases in a department store are made centrally by the purchase department of the store, whereas sales are decentralized in different departments.
(f) Attractive services: A departmental store aims at providing maximum services to the customers. Some of the services offered by it include home delivery of goods, execution of telephone orders, grant of credit facilities and provision for rest-rooms, telephone booths, restaurants, saloons etc.
(g) Attracts large number of customers: As these stores are usually at central places they attract a large number of customers during the best part of the day.