Buying and Merchandising Career Paths

A Typical Career Path for Buying and Merchandising Roles Within Retail

A career map outlines all the key roles within a department, showing both promotional pathways and potential lateral moves. Solid lines typically represent promotions, while dotted lines indicate possible transfers to other roles that aren't part of a direct promotion track.

This example covers the core functions everyone needs.  Companies who develop private label or own brand products may need a design team to work alongside the buyers.  Those who buy product outside their domestic market may need an import management team and those buying non-branded product may need a quality assurance team.

Those companies with one or more of these characteristics will need to make appropriate adjustments.

This map serves several important purposes:

• It is the start point for any talent development planning or any upskilling or reskilling initiative
• It is also the start point for ambitious employees to identify their growth opportunities and develop their own career development plan.

For any planning purpose, the map should have the following data associated with it:

• Each role on the map should have a clear job description.
• Each role should also have a defined set of competencies and skills required to be considered fully proficient. Reaching this level of proficiency makes an individual eligible for promotion, provided they also meet other criteria, such as teamwork, leadership potential, and willingness to take on greater responsibility.
• Every role should have a defined learning path, which we’ll cover shortly.

This section of our web site contains several other examples of career maps.

You can learn more about talent development planning and how it is changing here.

Click on any avatar on the career map to review Martec’s recommended learning path for that role.