1.
Retail
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Retail markets and shops have a very ancient history, dating back to antiquity. Retailing involves the process of selling goods or services to customers through multiple channels of distribution to earn a profit. Retailers satisfy demand is identified through a supply chain, Once the strategic retail plan is in place, retailers devise the retail mix which includes product, price, place, promotion, personnel and presentation. In the digital age, a number of retailers are seeking to reach broader markets by selling through multiple channels. Digital technologies are changing the way that consumers pay for goods. Retailing support services may include the provision of credit, delivery services. Shopping generally refers to the act of buying products, sometimes this is done to obtain final goods, including necessities such as food and clothing, sometimes it takes place as a recreational activity. Recreational shopping often involves window shopping and browsing, it not always result in a purchase. Retail shops occur in a range of types and in many different contexts - from strip shopping centres in residential streets through to large. Shopping streets may restrict traffic to pedestrians only, forms of non-shop retailing include online retailing and mail order. Retail comes from the Old French word tailler, which means to cut off, clip, pare and it was first recorded as a noun with the meaning of a sale in small quantities in 1433. Like in French, the retail in both Dutch and German also refers to the sale of small quantities of items. Also see History of merchants, History of the market place, open air, public markets were known in ancient Babylonia and Assyria. These markets typically occupied a place in the towns centre, surrounding the market, skilled artisans, such as metal-workers and leather workers, occupied premises in alley ways that led to the open market-place. These artisans may have sold wares directly from their premises, in ancient Greece markets operated within the agora, and in ancient Rome the forum. In antiquity, exchange involved direct selling, merchants or peddlers, the Phoenicians, noted for their seafaring skills, plied their ships across the Mediterranean, becoming a major trading power by 9th century BCE. The Phoenicians imported and exported wood, textiles, glass and produce such as wine, oil, dried fruit, the Phoenicians extensive trade networks necessitated considerable book-keeping and correspondence. In around 1500 BCE, the Phoenicians developed an alphabet which was much easier to learn that the complex scripts used in ancient Egypt
2.
Industry
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Industry is the production of goods or related services within an economy. The major source of revenue of a group or company is the indicator of its relevant industry, when a large group has multiple sources of revenue generation, it is considered to be working in different industries. Manufacturing industry became a key sector of production and labour in European and North American countries during the Industrial Revolution, upsetting previous mercantile and this came through many successive rapid advances in technology, such as the production of steel and coal. Following the Industrial Revolution, possibly a third of the economic output are derived that is from manufacturing industries. Many developed countries and many developing/semi-developed countries depend significantly on manufacturing industry, Industries, the countries they reside in, and the economies of those countries are interlinked in a complex web of interdependence. Industries can be classified in a variety of ways, at the top level, industry is often classified according to the three-sector theory into sectors, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Some authors add quaternary or even quinary sectors, over time, the fraction of a societys industry within each sector changes. Below the economic sectors there are other more detailed industry classifications. These classification systems commonly divide industries according to functions and markets. Market-based classification systems such as the Global Industry Classification Standard and the Industry Classification Benchmark are used in finance, the International Standard Industrial Classification of all economic activities is the most complete and systematic industrial classification made by the United Nations Statistics Division. ISIC is a classification of economic activities arranged so that entities can be classified according to the activity they carry out. The Industrial Revolution led to the development of factories for large-scale production, originally the factories were steam-powered, but later transitioned to electricity once an electrical grid was developed. The mechanized assembly line was introduced to parts in a repeatable fashion. This led to significant increases in efficiency, lowering the cost of the end process, later automation was increasingly used to replace human operators. This process has accelerated with the development of the computer and the robot, historically certain manufacturing industries have gone into a decline due to various economic factors, including the development of replacement technology or the loss of competitive advantage. An example of the former is the decline in manufacturing when the automobile was mass-produced. A recent trend has been the migration of prosperous, industrialized nations towards a post-industrial society and this is manifested by an increase in the service sector at the expense of manufacturing, and the development of an information-based economy, the so-called informational revolution. In a post-industrial society, manufacturing is relocated to more favourable locations through a process of off-shoring
3.
Commerce
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Commerce is the activity of buying and selling of goods and services, especially on a large scale. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural and technological systems that are in operation in any country or internationally, commerce is derived from the Latin commercium, from cum, together, and merx, merchandise. Some commentators trace the origins of commerce to the start of transaction in prehistoric times. Apart from traditional self-sufficiency, trading became a facility of prehistoric people. Historian Peter Watson and Ramesh Manickam dates the history of commerce from circa 150,000 years ago. In historic times, the introduction of currency as a money, facilitated a wider exchange of goods. Numismatists have collections of these tokens, which include coins from some Ancient World large-scale societies. For example, if a man who makes pots for a living needs a new house, he/she may wish to hire someone to build it for him/her. But he/she cannot make an equivalent number of pots to equal this service done for him/her, because if the builder could build the house. During the Middle Ages, commerce developed in Europe by trading luxury goods at trade fairs, wealth became converted into movable wealth or capital. Banking systems developed where money on account was transferred across national boundaries, hand to hand markets became a feature of town life, and were regulated by town authorities. Today commerce includes as a subset a complex system of companies which try to maximize their profits by offering products and services to the market at the lowest production cost
4.
Institutional
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Institutions are stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior. As structures or mechanisms of social order, they govern the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community, Institutions are identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern living behavior. Primary or meta-institutions are institutions such as the family that are enough to encompass other institutions. As structures and mechanisms of social order, institutions are an object of study in social sciences such as political science, anthropology, economics. Institutions are also a concern for law, the formal mechanism for political rule-making. That is, institutions arise, develop and function in a pattern of social self-organization beyond conscious intentions of the individuals involved, as mechanisms of social interaction, institutions manifest in both formal organizations, such as the U. S. Formal institutions are set forth by a relevant authority and informal institutions are generally unwritten societal rules, norms. Primary or meta-institutions are institutions that encompass many other institutions, both formal and informal (e. g. the family, government, the economy, education, most important institutions, considered abstractly, have both objective and subjective aspects, examples include money and marriage. The subjective experience of money is so pervasive and persuasive that economists talk of the illusion and try to disabuse their students of it. Examples of institutions include, Family, The family is the center of the childs life, the family teaches children cultural values and attitudes about themselves and others - see sociology of the family. Children learn continuously from the environment that adults create, Children also become aware of class at a very early age and assign different values to each class accordingly. Religion, Some believe religion is like an ethnic or cultural category, making it likely for the individuals to break from religious affiliations. Parental religious participation is the most influential part of religious socialization—more so than religious peers or religious beliefs, see sociology of religion and civil religion. Peer groups, A peer group is a group whose members have interests, social positions. This is where children can escape supervision and learn to form relationships on their own, the influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence however peer groups generally only affect short term interests unlike the family which has long term influence. Capitalist society may encourage the growth of centralization and interdependence under the control of an elite, socialism encourages democratic, bottom-up control by the people and their communities. Legal systems, Children are pressured from both parents and peers to conform and obey certain laws or norms of the group/community, parents’ attitudes toward legal systems influence children’s views as to what is legally acceptable. For example, children whose parents are continually in jail are more accepting of incarceration, see jurisprudence, philosophy of law, sociology of law
5.
Professional
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A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns their living from a specified professional activity. In addition, most professionals are subject to strict codes of conduct, Professional standards of practice and ethics for a particular field are typically agreed upon and maintained through widely recognized professional associations, such as the IEEE. Some definitions of professional limit this term to those professions that serve some important aspect of public interest, in narrow usage, not all expertise is considered a profession. Although sometimes incorrectly referred to as professions, occupations such as skilled construction, the completion of an apprenticeship is generally associated with skilled labour, or trades such as carpenter, electrician, mason, painter, plumber and other similar occupations. A related distinction would be that a professional does mainly mental work, although professional training appears to be ideologically neutral, it may be biased towards those with higher class backgrounds and a formal education. His evidence is both qualitative and quantitative, including examinations, industry statistics and personal accounts of trainees. A key theoretical dispute arises from the observation that established professions are subject to strict codes of conduct, some have thus argued that these codes of conduct, agreed upon and maintained through widely recognized professional associations, are a key element of what constitutes any profession. Thus, as people became more and more specialized in their trade, they began to profess their skill to others, with a reputation to uphold, trusted workers of a society who have a specific trade are considered professionals. Ironically, the usage of the word profess declined from the late 1800s to the 1950s, centre for the Study of Professions Organizational culture Professional boundaries Professional sports
6.
Business
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A business is an organizational entity involved in the provision of goods and services to consumers. Businesses may also be social non-profit enterprises or state-owned public enterprises operated by governments with specific social, a business owned by multiple private individuals may form as an incorporated company or jointly organise as a partnership. Countries have different laws that may ascribe different rights to the business entities. The word business can refer to an organization or to an entire market sector or to the sum of all economic activity. Compound forms such as agribusiness represent subsets of the broader meaning. Businesses aim to maximize sales to have their income exceed their expenditures, resulting in a profit, the owner operates the business alone and may hire employees. A sole proprietor has unlimited liability for all obligations incurred by the business, partnership, A partnership is a business owned by two or more people. In most forms of partnerships, each partner has unlimited liability for the debts incurred by the business, the three most prevalent types of for-profit partnerships are, general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships. Corporation, The owners of a corporation have limited liability and the business has a legal personality from its owners. Corporations can be either government-owned or privately owned and they can organize either for profit or as nonprofit organizations. A privately owned, for-profit corporation is owned by its shareholders, a privately owned, for-profit corporation can be either privately held by a small group of individuals, or publicly held, with publicly traded shares listed on a stock exchange. Cooperative, Often referred to as a co-op, a cooperative is a limited-liability business that can organize as for-profit or not-for-profit, a cooperative differs from a corporation in that it has members, not shareholders, and they share decision-making authority. Cooperatives are typically classified as either consumer cooperatives or worker cooperatives, cooperatives are fundamental to the ideology of economic democracy. In contrast, unincorporated businesses or persons working on their own are not as protected. Franchises, A franchise is a system in which entrepreneurs purchase the rights to open, franchising in the United States is widespread and is a major economic powerhouse. One out of retail businesses in the United States are franchised and 8 million people are employed in a franchised business. Real estate businesses sell, invest, construct and develop properties – including land, residential homes, retailers, wholesalers, and distributors act as middlemen and get goods produced by manufacturers to the intended consumers, they make their profits by marking up their prices. Most stores and catalog companies are distributors or retailers, transportation businesses such as railways, airlines, shipping companies that deliver goods and individuals to their destinations for a fee
7.
Goods
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In economics, goods are materials that satisfy human wants and provide utility, for example, to a consumer making a purchase of a satisfying product. A common distinction is made between goods that are property, and services, which are non-physical. A good is an item that is useful to people but scarce in relation to its demand. In contrast, free goods, such as air, are naturally in abundant supply, commodities may be used as a synonym for economic goods but often refer to marketable raw materials and primary products. Although in economic theory all goods are considered tangible, in reality certain classes of goods, such as information, only take intangible forms. For example, among other goods an apple is an object, while news belongs to an intangible class of goods. Goods may increase or decrease their utility directly or indirectly and may be described as having marginal utility, some things are useful, but not scarce enough to have monetary value, such as the Earths atmosphere, these are referred to as free goods. In economics, a bad is the opposite of a good, Goods diversity allows for their classification into different categories based on distinctive characteristics, such as tangibility and relative elasticity. A tangible good like an apple differs from a good like information due to the impossibility of a person to physically hold the latter. Intangible goods differ from services in that goods are transferable and can be traded. Price elasticity also differentiates types of goods, an inelastic good is one for which there are few or no substitutes, such as tickets to major sporting events, original works by famous artists, and prescription medicine such as insulin. Complementary goods are generally more inelastic than goods in a family of substitutes and this is because hamburger buns and beef are complementary goods. It is important to note that goods considered complements or substitutes are relative associations, the following chart illustrates the classification of goods according to their exclusivity and competitiveness. Goods are capable of being delivered to a consumer. Goods that are economic intangibles can only be stored, delivered, Goods, both tangibles and intangibles, may involve the transfer of product ownership to the consumer. Services do not normally involve transfer of ownership of the service itself, for example, distributing electricity among consumers is a service provided by an electric utility company. While the service is a process that remains in its entirety in the ownership of the service provider. The consumer becomes electric energy owner by purchase and may use it for any lawful purposes just like any other goods, fast-moving consumer goods Final goods Intangible asset Intangible good List of economics topics Goods and services Service Tangible property Bannock, Graham et al
8.
Consumer
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A consumer is a person or organization that uses economic services or commodities. In economic systems consumers are utilities expressed in the decision to trade or not, the consumer is the one who pays to consume goods and services produced. As such, consumers play a role in the economic system of a nation. Without consumer demand, producers would lack one of the key motivations to produce, the consumer also forms part of the chain of distribution. The law primarily uses the notion of the consumer in relation to protection laws. As of all voters are also consumers, consumer protection takes on a clear political significance. Concern over the interests of consumers has also spawned activism, as well as incorporation of consumer education into school curricula, there are also various non-profit publications, such as Which. Consumer Reports and Choice Magazine, dedicated to assist in education and decision making. In India, the Consumer Protection Act 1986 differentiates the consummation of a commodity or service for use or to earn a livelihood. Only consumers are protected per this act and any person, entity or organization purchasing a commodity for commercial reasons are exempted from any benefits of this act, U. S. Government National Consumer Protection Week
