marchandise

Marchandise is a French term that designates goods that are bought and sold for profit. It refers to tangible movable items held for sale by retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and logistics operators. In accounting, marchandise are inventoried as stock and valued at cost or net realizable value, and their sale is recorded as cost of goods sold.

Marchandise can encompass a wide range of items, from consumer products such as clothing and electronics to raw materials and spare parts used in production. The term is used in contrast to services, which are intangible. In everyday business language, marchandise denotes both a single item and a quantity of items in stock, with the plural form les marchandises used for multiple goods.

In international trade and law, marchandises is the French plural for goods and appears in customs declarations, transport documents, and value-added tax contexts. It is also used in discussions of incoterms and logistics to describe movable property that is transported or exchanged across borders.

Merchandising is a related concept often associated with the presentation, promotion, and sale of marchandises. In retail, it covers product assortment, pricing, packaging, and display strategies intended to optimize sales and profitability, whether in physical stores or online.