Merchandising- Packet Flashcards
Purchasing, pricing, display and sale of merchandise.
Merchandising
- Caskets and burial containers
- OBCs
- Cremation and alternative containers
- Urns and cremation oriented products
- Monuments, memorials, cemetery merchandise
- Burial clothing
- Personalization options
- Sundry items
Merchandising Includes, but is not Limited to:
Provides value for the consumer and fair profit for the funeral home.
Merchandising
The dual role they had to play:
- Businessperson selling funeral related merchandise
- Professional providing service realted to the disposition of human remains
Classic Historical Dilemma that has Faced those in Funeral Service for Centuries:
- Recognize the funeral as an experience of value
- Consider service as a separate product to be merchandised
- Personalization options
- Market forces
Merchandising Service
- Acknowledge that a life has been lived
- Allow mourners to remember and honor their loved one in a special way
- Serves as a central gather place for family and friends to give emotional and physical support to one another.
- Provides closure for the bereaved
- Initiates the grieving process
- Confirms the reality and finality of death
- Encourages mourners to face the pair of their loss and express their thoughts and feelings
- Helps survivors to better cope with their grief and enables them to move forward with their lives.
Recognize the Funeral as an Experience of Value
- Traditional funeral with visitation and ceremony, burial to follow
- Traditional funeral with visitation and ceremony, burial at a later date
- Memorial service (body not present) and burial to follow
- Burial first then memorial service
- Memorial service and no burial
- Graveside service
- Direct cremation
- Immediate burial
- Packages
Consider the Funeral Service as a Separate Product to be Merchandised
Never forget that this is an attitude, not just products. Products and merchandise enhances the experience.
Personalizaiton
- Casket
- Environment in the funeral home
- Music
- Hobbies of the deceased, etc.
Personalization Options
- Other providers of merchandise (casket stores)
- Other provides of service (direct disposition licenses, memorial societies, cremation societies).
- National trends- Cremation, baby boomer mobility, pre-need
Market Forces
- Adult formula service
- Adult non-formula service
- Non-adult formual service
- Exceptional funeral service
Areas of Funeral Service Income
Any funeral in which your normal regular pricing quotation is applied. It would involve the total package of service from first call to post funeral counseling.
Adult Formula Service
Any service where your normal pricing quotation is not used, in effect only in a partial service sale.
Adult Non-Formula Service
- Ship in- you sell casket
- Ship out- you sell casket
- Contract funerals (i.e. nursing home account, NMS account)
- Indigent cases
- Memorial society contract
- Full service followed by cremation
Examples of an Adult Non-Formula Service
You would not use your normal pricing on those occasions. This would include stillborns up to children. It would include any service where the casket is smaller in width/length than a regular sized casket.
Non-Adult Formula Service
