EFFICIENT CONSUMER RESPONSE (ECR) PRINCIPLES AND THEIR APPLICATION IN RETAIL TRADE ENTERPRISES IN LATVIA

Abstract

The sector of the retail trade has always played a significant role in the Latvian economics. The basis for the retail trade is the satisfaction of consumers’ needs and the formation of the long-term relationship. To retain the existing consumers and to attract the new buyers, one of the fundamental tasks is to create the according assortment. The Efficient Consumer Response presupposes not only the new approach in creating the assortment, but also influences all business processes in the enterprise and significantly raises the level of assortment. The purpose of the present study is to analyze the level of the ECR application in the retail enterprises in Latvia. Therefore, there were set the following tasks: a) to characterize the retail trade tendencies in Latvia; b) to research the principles of assortment formation. The research methods applied were the expert interviews and consumers’ survey. The key result of the research was: the ECR implementation helps to form the assortment of the retail trade enterprises in more responsive to consumers’’ needs way.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.9.12812