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
Exceptionally high charges and services beyond the norm.
- i.e. High profile funerals
Exceptional Funeral Service
- Removal and embalming for other funeral homes (trade work)
- Mounuments and markers
- Flowers
- Cemetery
- Crematory
- Livery (vehicles)
- Ship in- no casket sale
- Ship out- no casket sale
- Burial garments
- Interest in deliquent accounts
- Vaults, liners, urns, etc.
Other Funeral Home Related Income
- The cost to you of an adult formula funeral
- Range per calendar day
- Cost factors
Expenses and Overhead Costs
The number of dollars necessary to survive 365 days per year. These are not profit dollars but overhead dollars.
Range Per Calendar Day
The percent of total sales based on adult formual funerals necessary for your survival.
Cost Factors
- Inflation
- Payroll
- Fringe benefits for employees
- Wholesale cost of merchandise and supplies
- Buildings
- Maintenance
- Insurance
- Public relations and advertising
- Rolling stock
- State and federal taxes
- Professional fees- lawyers and accountants
- Bad debt
- Employee theft
- Embalming facilities and supplies
- Heat, light, water, power
- Telephone bills
Examples of Cost Factors
One of the primary responsibilities of any business is to generate enough profit to ensure its existence and ability to continue serving its clientele.
Developing Sales Objectives
- Evaluate the market
- Scruitinize sales history
- Considerations regarding merchandise it plans it offer
- Integration
How Developing Sales Objectives is Accomplished:
- Demographics
- Vital statistics
- Economic base
- Burial habits
Evaluate the Market
- What has not sold? Why?
- Evaluation every 6 months
Scrutinize Sales History
Of its proposed product line with its existing service offerings (cremation service options, but not enough product to meet the consumer’s needs).
Innovation
