Retailing 8th Edition by Patrick Dunne,Robert Lusch, James Carver

Exercise 1

There is a trend away drinking of hard liquor and toward wines and therefore more grocery stores are handling a larger assortment of wines in their beer, liquor, and wine departments. Of course there is only so much space and grocers also face market, inventory turnover, and dollar merchandise constraints. As retailers expand more SKUs into the wine category they need to look for ways to spot consumer trends and then translate these into merchandising opportunities. One possibility is to listen to the advice of Robert Parker who is the editor and publisher of The Wine Advocate. Robert Parker as "The Independent Consumer's Guide to Fine Wines" (www.eRobertParker.com). To learn more about Robert Parker see Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wine_Advocate). Of course there are other sources such as The Wine Spectator (http://www.winespectator.com). See what you can learn about wine from these sources and other blogs and twitter dealing with wine. What useful information is available and how can it be used in the merchandise buying process Do you think the information is trustworthy