Category Management as a Tool for Managing the Assortment Matrix of a Sports Retailer

Category management is a concept of trade space and assortment management, within which the latter is divided into product categories, which are groups of similar products. Category management is a fundamental discipline, which includes consumer research, analysis of product categories as separate business units with their turnover indicators, profitability, tasks and goals, development of brand strategy. The use of the category management concept as a tool of assortment matrix management is relevant for the modern Russian sports retailer. In the conditions of actively developing competition in the sports retail market, the lack of direct supplies from the world's leading manufacturers of sports products, as well as unstable economic and political situation, category management is a tool that allows to increase profits by optimizing the assortment and display, to reduce the total costs of storage of stocks, to understand customer preferences at the level of product categories. Within the framework of this work the object of the study is the category of goods “clothing” of a sports retailer. The subject of the study is category management as a tool of assortment matrix management. The purpose of this paper is to develop practical recommendations for the use of the concept of category management in the management of the assortment matrix of a sports retailer in the category «clothing». To achieve the goal the following tasks are solved in the framework of the work: definition of the concept and essence of the term category management and description of its processes, analysis of the practice of using category management in the formation of assortment strategy of foreign and Russian companies, analysis of the approach to the formation and management of the assortment matrix of sports retailer (company X), analysis of its assortment matrix and formation of recommendations for its management.