I was chatting with a senior industry individual recently. His thesis was that as retailer competition is driven in part by the so-called “Discounters” (read our blog - “Discounter”), that meant that supplier-retailer relationships were increasingly about getting to the lowest possible “no frills” price, which meant, in turn, drastic cutting of any non-essential overhead
Winning in category management can come down to many things, but the one certain way to get your buyers to listen to you rather than competitors is to bring a totally new perspective that’s a game changer on merchandising, planograms and ranging. It's rare that such a breakthrough becomes available in the UK. Your goal
To some extent, this is the same debate that affects all research. But the polar opposites of commercial impact range from projects that are seen to be ‘game changers’ and generate massive ROI, to those that perhaps never even see the light of day. I was talking to a banking type recently, one who works
The gondola end. Putting aside the question of why it's still called a gondola (!) it’s the primary driver of volume for most packaged goods companies. Buy an “end”, get the sales. Simples. If expensive. Most brands’ total sales volume is dependent on buying a fair smattering of these through the year. For some, it’s
Sandwiches at the debrief? Travel expenses? No, it's much worse than that. It's time. The biggest actual cost of any research project is the time spent on it. Your time, your team’s time and even more so, the recipients’ time. It's like an iceberg. The bit that sticks up and everyone pays attention to, is
One of the most simplified ideas in category management and shopper marketing today is “satisfying the shopper”. It’s even the proposed goal of the Category Management Association (The CMA, a professional association, that exists to help its members drive meaningful category and brand growth by building shopper satisfaction and facilitating strategic collaboration between retailers, suppliers and
My starting point here is that there is a shopper in the store, with a need for your category or product. They may not be thinking about it, but they are at least an occasional buyer and right now they don’t have any at home and/or they could happily use or consume one. Clearly, not
After extensive research with my kids (yes, they are over the age of majority!), I can report that dating has remarkable similarities with in-store marketing. Not convinced? Then read on. Step 1. Getting noticed Wow, a lot of pre-nightclub effort goes into looking right. Choosing the right outfit, sorting the hair, doing the make-up, to name just
Humans have a natural psychological bias to be unhappy about losing what they already think they have rather than being excited about getting something extra. A recent study showed people would pay more to stop the aircraft passenger in front from reclining into “their space” than they would to put their seat up if it
An “addiction” could be defined as something that is pleasurable short term but you know is damaging long run. I think we would all concur that promotions risk being exactly that. There is a critical problem here, for me, in how we assess promotions, even in terms of pure economics. We drop the price by