CPGmatters: Retail Commission Aims to Enhance Shopper Marketing
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.
CPG companies and retailers are more interested in - and more experimental with - shopper marketing than ever, but so far their successes have been relatively hit-or-miss. The goal of a new industry-wide initiative called the Retail Commission on Shopper Marketing is to come up with a retailer-driven model that will make shopper marketing effective for manufacturers and shoppers as well as retail chains.
Led by charter members Coca-Cola Co. and 10 major chains, and advised strategically by the Partnering Group and the In-Store Marketing Institute as well as by a number of other CPG giants, the commission was launched last spring. Members aim to establish some specific shopper marketing pilots by this spring as well as unveil some of their initial conclusions, best practices and guidelines at the In-Store Marketing Summit, to be held at McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., in April.
Some of the industry pioneers who initiated category management a generation ago now are behind the creation of the Retail Commission. But unlike the highly successful practice of category management, retailers in general haven't initiated a thorough-going approach to shopper marketing.
"Shopper marketing primarily has been on the manufacturer side," said Brian Harris, president of the Partnering Group, based in Cincinnati, and one of the fathers of category management as well as of the new shopper marketing initiative. "Manufacturers have been bringing in creative and good ideas to retailers for several years, but retailers are overwhelmed - they don't know where shopper marketing goes or where it fits."
"To change that, we had to get retailers to put their stamp on [the commission], otherwise there would be lots of wasted money, and disconnects. Retailers needed to understand it and shape it and feel good about it," said Mr. Harris.
Coca-Cola has been active already in ramping up shopper-marketing initiatives with the likes of Meijer, the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based mass discounter, and other retail chains. Kraft also has been proactive about shopper-marketing experiments with Meijer - one of the retail commission's charter members - and with other retailers.
But so far, effective shopper marketing collaborations like these have been the exception rather than the rule.
The problem often begins with a disconnect between shopper insights and shopper marketing. "There's a lot of unproductive work being done, when it's not plugged into a comprehensive model of how shopper insights should be gained and where the biggest gaps are that need to be bridged," Mr. Harris said.
"The trend is to budget more money into in-store activities and influencing shopper behavior. That's great for retailers, but if there isn't a disciplined approach, [shopper marketing] will be a money pit. Investments keep getting bigger, and you can spend a lot of money - poorly - if you don't understand that and don't have a platform that's manageable."
Retail Commission founders want to make the entire discipline of shopper marketing more reliable and repeatable.
"We're trying to convey to retailers the notion that there's lots of energy, creativity and resources on the manufacturers' side that can be tapped into if [retailers and manufacturers] would get some thought alignment on this issue," said Steve Frenda, managing director of strategy and development for the In-Store Marketing Institute.
Discussion Questions: What are the main hurdles to improved in-store shopper marketing? What can vendors do? What can retailers do?