WHOLESALE AND RETAIL

   Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of

goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or

to other wholesalers and related subordinated services.  In general, it is the sale of goods to anyone other than a

standard consumer.

    According to the United Nations Statistics Division,

“wholesale” is the resale (sale without transformation) of new and

used goods to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional or

professional users, or to other wholesalers, or involves acting as

an agent or broker in buying merchandise for, or selling

merchandise to, such persons orcompanies. Wholesalers

frequently physically assemble, sort and grade goods in large

lots, break bulk, repack and redistribute in smaller lots. While

wholesalers of most products usually operate from independent

premises,wholesale marketing for foodstuffs can take place at

specific wholesale markets where all traders are congregated.

    Traditionally, wholesalers were closer to the markets they

supplied than the source from which they got the products.

    However, with the advent of the internet

and E-procurement there are an increasing number of

wholesalers located nearer manufacturing bases in China,

Taiwan, and Southeast Asia.

    Retail is the sale of goods and services from individuals or

businesses to the end-user. Retailers are part of an integrated

system called the supply chain. A retailer purchases goods

or products in large quantities from manufacturers directly or

through a wholesaler, and then sells smaller quantities to

the consumerfor a profit. Retailing can be done in either fixed

locations like stores or markets, door-to-door or by delivery.

Retailing includes subordinated services, such as delivery. The

term "retailer" is also applied where a service provider services

the needs of a large number of individuals, such as a public utility,

like electric power.

    Shops may be on residential streets, streets with few or no

houses or in a shopping mall. Shopping streets may be

for pedestrians only. Sometimes a shopping street has a partial

or full roof to protect customers from precipitation. Online

retailing, a type of electronic commerce used for business-

to-consumer(B2C) transactions and mail order, are forms of

non-shop retailing.