Mass Market Retailer: Definition & Examples

What is a Mass Market Retailer?

A mass market retailer is a retailer targeting a wide market segment that includes a wide variety of customers.

Typically, mass market retailers intend to sell to as many people as possible, unlike luxury retail businesses that target a smaller segment of customers with high purchasing power.

The Business Model

Mass market retail businesses make money by selling low markup merchandise in high volume. Because the sales volume is high, they can purchase products at better prices from suppliers, and thereby afford to sell at lower retail prices and target as many people as possible.

The key for such a business model to work at such low gross margins is to turn inventory fast enough, to generate gross profit with every turn.

Check out our retail benchmarks for different financial ratios from different publicly-traded retailers.

Mass Market Retailers in Fashion Business

The fashion business is segmented into different levels, that serve different target markets. This segmentation is called the Fashion Pyramid.

At the bottom of the pyramid come the mass market brands, such as H&M, Shein, GAP and Forever 21. Then comes the premium brands and luxury brands, who tend to target narrower market segments with higher purchasing power, and serve them with more high-end products, tailored for those segments.

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The higher the level in the pyramid the higher the quality of the products and also the selling price. Products at higher levels have higher markups and sell in lower volumes.