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Shopper Research: 3 reasons why asking for the Key Takeouts may be wrong We recently delivered a huge Shopper Intelligence project for a client where, I calculated, the data set created approached nearly 500,000 data points at the first “cut”. This wasn’t some Leviathon developed based on traffic measurement or social media. This is just what we usually do:  post-shop interviews using a 10-15 minute questionnaire. But if you take a typical questionnaire with all the question options, you multiply it by several categories and a number of different retailers, add in the ability to cut it b ..read more

Shopper Research: 3 reasons why asking the Key Takeouts is wrong We recently delivered a huge Shopper Intelligence project for a client where, I calculated, the data set created approached nearly 500,000 data points at the first “cut”. This wasn’t some Leviathon developed based on traffic measurement or social media. This is just what we usually do:  post-shop interviews using a 10-15 minute questionnaire. But if you take a typical questionnaire with all the question options, you multiply it by several categories and a number of different retailers, add in the ability to cut it by segmen ..read more

Category Management: Becoming a trusted advisor – 5 tips for success Our task in Cat Man could be defined as using understanding of the consumer and shopper journey to identify growth strategies for our customers and our business – to deliver the “Triple Win”. But as we all know this hides a multiplicity of competing demands. And much depends on the mindset of your boss, or even who your boss is. Some category management functions can be under pressure to be more like a sales support function i.e., “just give me the data deck that justifies the listing”. Some may be more autonomous and be abl ..read more

7 cons+7 pros: Repeat the same shopper study or do something new? I hear about the same debate time and time again: whether to re-run a past piece of research or try a different methodology to find “new news”. And this particularly applies in the field of shopper where there is an understandable desire to wow the retailer with something the other guys don’t have. To make a splash. (Further read on this in our category management blog “Stop Looking for the Killer Insight“.) But often missing from the debate is much attention to what the research is actually used for (whether indeed it is used ..read more

Organic Fruit & Vegetables: A big opportunity for Premium and NPD, with the right focus A surge in demand from locked-down shoppers helped sales of organic produce in the UK rise by 12.6% to £2.79bn in 2020 – the category’s highest growth level in 15 years, according to The Grocer. This presents a big opportunity for producers if they are aware of what shoppers expect in the category. Our analysis shows what UK shoppers are looking for and how their needs compared to the rest of the store.   Fruit & Vegetables is the number one category across the store where shoppers ..read more

If you’ve been through the annual rounds of NPD sell-in days a few times, you may think that what these presentations and a big juicy Burger have in common is • Too many layers • A lot of garnish but not enough meat • The bit someone dislikes that you end up taking out (Could we call this the Gherkin slide?) There is something soooo good about a fully loaded, perfectly made burger and it is the same goodness that makes your NPD sell-in presentation irresistible and delicious! It comes down to two things, quality ingredients and a balanced, solid structure. • The base of the bun • The meaty ..read more

Category Managers. The kind of people the world needs more of. The supermarket shelf. Where two world views collide. Sometimes being in Category Management might feel like being a United Nations peacekeeper, a global summit negotiator, or like you dropped into an episode of Game of Thrones. (We have a whole booklet of cartoons about life as a Category Manager!) “Category” is one of those few parts of consumer goods life where it’s our job to bridge the divides, bring people together and align different objectives. Which two worlds do we connect? 1. Retailer vs Supplier First, I could be ta ..read more

Stop looking for the killer insight Insight can be many things. For some, it’s a department buried deep within a business. If you’re lucky it’s the hub that drives a culture of new ideas. Willy Wonka’s secret lab where the unbelievable or unknown are whipped into a deliciously warm bar of ‘oooooh, that’s interesting!’ Most likely it’s another string to the bow of the Category Management team. This can sometimes mean that the development of ‘insight’ becomes more of a production line of samey content. You may not have the engaging story you want to wow your business or your buyer with, but it ..read more

These insights about beer shopping behaviour were first published as part of The Grocer’s Alcohol Category Report 2020. From Lock-in to Lockdown: changes in Beer Shopping Behaviour during Covid Corona anyone? This may have sounded like a tasteless joke as we entered this pandemic. Yet, somewhat ironically, the Mexican lager brand has seen a 40% increase in its UK sales in 2020 (Nielsen). See more about the top winner brands in this Guardian analysis. While pubs were closed, at-home alcohol consumption took up about half of the on-trade drinking occasions. That’s an extra half a million litre ..read more