Issues of Assortment Management in Retail Trade within the Framework of Competition Peculiarities in the Post-crisis Period

Retail trade in Russia, having weathered serious recession during the economic crisis, is moving to a new higher level of competition, which determines the need not only for efficiency improvement of store networks but also for gaining and retaining the target customers loyalty. The article considers retail trade functioning in the conditions of the new economic reality and competition peculiarities in this sphere are revealed, a growing importance of assortment management as a factor of maintaining trade networks competitiveness is shown. Different approaches to understanding the process of assortment management and different methods of its structuring are analyzed, three groups of assortment structuring methods are singled out, their advantages and limitations are described. The authors approach to assortment structuring, which allows to reflect the level of the target customers loyalty, is defined, its advantages and limitations are shown. Two methods of calculation of the index «customers loyalty level» are offered.