Retail Terms and Definitions

A traditional supermarket refers to stores offering a full line of groceries, meat, and produce with at least $2 million in annual sales and up to 15% of their sales in general merchandise (GM)/health and beauty care (HBC). These stores typically carry anywhere from 15,000 to 60,000 SKUs (depending on the size of the store), and may offer a service deli, a service bakery, and/or a pharmacy. 

The geographic area served by a store and its competitors. The area from which a store draws most of its shoppers.

Consists of all the elements in a store that encourage or inhibit consumers during their contact with a given store.

Temporary Price Reduction (TPR) is the act of either directly or indirectly lowering the price per unit of a product. Examples include “cents off” promotions, where manufacturers or retailers temporarily reduce the price of a product, and Bonus Pack promotions which offer extra product for free. A price discount of short duration. Usually funded with brand trade promotion dollars.

Sweethearting is a retail term describing theft when a cashier doesn’t ring up all items in an order for friends, family of co-workers.

Supercenters are a hybrid of a large traditional supermarket and a mass merchandiser. They offer a wide variety of food, as well as non-food merchandise. These stores average more than 170,000 square feet and typically devote as much as 40% of the space to grocery items, e.g., Walmart Supercenters, Super Target, Meijer, and The Kroger Marketplace stores. 

Super warehouses are a high-volume hybrid of a large traditional supermarket and a warehouse store. Super Warehouse stores typically offer a full range of service departments, quality perishables, and reduced prices, e.g., Cub Foods, Food 4 Less,and Smart & Final. 

Choosing to give more business to one store than a competing store. The level of loyalty is often calculated using total spending level per store compared to other shoppers, frequency of store visits, or size of basket.

A stock keeping unit is a unique number assigned by the manufacturer to each product they grow or produce. It is used for tracking and managing inventory.

A standardized price look up code or PLU is a number assigned by the retailer to a random weight product such as produce. The PLU, when entered at checkout, identifies the product and indicates if it is priced by weight or count.