to buy a house г Perhaps it is at retail level that marketing management has particularly interesting merchandising challenges, for when someone is window shopping no salesman is present to extol the merits of the goods displayed and the display itself is of high importance. A message may be conveyed by superficially irrelevant trappings. A store which sells informal clothes of a high grade may use a backdrop of posters showing lush, subtropical resorts, thus hoping to convey to the potential purchaser the impression that the clothes would be ideal for a summer holiday, and that, because they are fashionable and of good quality, they are customarily seen in the most exotic and expensive places. An enterprising shopkeeper in the Soho district of London, who specializes in holiday clothes, has employed a Spanish guitarist to play just inside the door of his shop between noon and 2 p.m.; this is an instance of imaginative merchandising, for it attracts people to a shop when the streets outside are likely to be more crowded than at any other time. в li'I In the grocery trade, supermarkets and other large and small selfservice stores, which aie revolutionizing retail distribution, can achieve certain operational economies. They do not run delivery services, nor do they offer credit, and, most important, customers assemble their own orders. Division of labour, for example, into shelf stockers and checkers or cashiers, helps to achieve efficiency among employees, but there are no selling personnel. This absence of human contact with the customer underlines the need to use merchandising techniques. Food must be wrapped hygienic ally. A package should offer the customer a recognizable quantity and standard of quality, it must be attractively designed, and must link with external promotion. All food, 'packaged or otherwise, must be accessible, and it should be displayed in an orderly and intriguing fashion. Music is being played in some supermarkets with the object of promoting a sense of wellbeing and even irresponsibility among customers. There is a whisper here of Francis Bacon : 'In the declining age of a state, mechanical arts and merchandise do flourish.' Management should heed this ancient philosopher. Advertising plays a substantial role in the affairs of a free society. If consumer choice is accepted as a natural corollary of such a society, if the forces of competition are to be set to work in the public interest, it must follow that the odds have to be shouted in the marketplace. This is not the point at which to pursue the economic or ethical arguments which the supporters and critics of advertising advance with much eloquence. The plain fact is that unless, as in a totalitarian society, the consumer is to be given what the State alone thinks is good for him, the securing of the identification of specific products and services 'brand recognition' as it is called is a part of the marketing task. Financehome