As retailers increasingly take charge of the consumer shopping experience, and expand the sophistication and quality of their private label offerings, companies are under increasing pressure to align their product mix, trade promotion planning and merchandising programmes to complement the strategies of individual retailers.
Against this backdrop, the importance of in-store compliance – with promotions, displays, pricing, and planograms – has never been greater.
For manufacturers, the goal of better monitoring, both in the store and in the field, has become an imperative for competing and winning at retail. More than ever, in-store metrics related to distribution, facings, pricing, POS materials and displays must be tracked and measured weekly or daily.
Participating companies
Survey respondents represented a cross section of industry sectors. Companies included: Advantage Sales and Marketing; Big Easy Chocolate; Black & Decker US Power Tools Division; Brushpoint Innovations; Cadbury; Campbell Soup Company; Canada Dry Motts; Daisy Brand; Danone – Canada; Dean Foods; Diageo North America; Edge Sales and Marketing; Hillman Group; Kellogg Company; Kimmie Candy Co; Kraft Foods; L’Oreal; Lance; Little Dish; Makita; Mars Information Service; McCormick & Company; MTD Products; Nestle USA; Pharmavite; Sara Lee Corp; and Tasty Baking Company.
Analysis results Not surprisingly, more than 50% of respondents said their top priority is to increase sales. However, specific trends are impacting in-store performance. • 40% of the respondents identified limited visibility of trade promotion compliance as their chief concern, making this the No 1 issue faced by both large and small companies. • Slightly more than a quarter of the respondents believe that increased presence of private label products is impacting their execution at retail. In general, this was a concern expressed by the larger companies. • 16% believe that reduction in retail staff on the shop floor is having a negative impact on their ability to execute. • Additional responses indicate that companies consider in-store execution of promotions as more important than other in-store operations, including out-of-stocks and order entry. Following top-line growth, merchandising and promotion compliance were identified as the next important priorities. Future investments in technology will be motivated by the need for efficiency and worker productivity. • Companies planning future investments are focusing on system and process improvements related to increasing the effectiveness of: 1. route optimisation (30%) 2. customer profiling/profitability (28%) 3. tracking actuals vs. targets (26%) 4. call productivity tracking (23%) 5. POS integration (21%) • Companies that are not currently using technologies are focusing investment around trade promotion compliance: 1. workload modeling (43%) 2. promotion compliance (non-RFID-37%) 3. TPM integration (36%) 4. price checks (32%) 5. POS integration (30%)
Source: Quofore in EMEA, China, Australasia, Asia and Americas
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024