The consumer panel has traditionally been an instrument used by marketing departments with the objective of obtaining a tracking of the market and the consumer. During the last years, a very important contribution to the development of consumer panels, from the viewpoint of aggregate and/or desegregate information, has been carried out in the field of trade information from the consumerâs prism. In this paper we will try to show a way of providing new information to improve the manufacturerâs sales strategy and provide better comprehension of the consumer by retailers.
The paper deals with the Indian experience of supermarkets unable to significantly impact on the retail structure, and the simultaneous growth of the small independent retailer, especially in fast moving consumer goods. It attempts to hypothesize the reasons for this phenomenon which is contrary to the trend experienced in the developed markets.
With the increasing concern for customer satisfaction, loyalty has come increasingly into focus in marketing planning and marketing strategy. This also applies to retailing. However, as the present paper will show, in a retailing context, loyalty is a complex phenomenon. This is particularly ascribable to the very complex manner in which consumers combine stores on different shopping trips with different purposes and for different kinds of products. Obviously how consumers evaluate the goods offered in a particular store has major influence upon their store choice, store loyalty and store preferences. With data from a study particularly looking into this issue it is shown how people with different âpreferred storesâ, look differently upon the quality of the various assortment components of the stores.
This paper will present a method of assessing the performance of each store in a chain to determine the optimum performance potential and identify opportunities to improve performance. It will illustrate how this technique has been successfully used to set guidelines for operations management, merchandising, finance, planning and real estate in the food, clothing and furniture retail sectors.
This paper discusses an approach to retail range development and category management for the toiletries and cosmetics sector on a multi- country basis. The paper develops a retail structure model for a number of national markets. Having looked at the structures, the paper then examines what can be learnt from cross-border comparisons of customer habits and retail preferences for advancing retail range development. The toiletries sector examined here is ideal for this analysis with many international brands sold through a diversity of retail formats across Europe.
In the United Kingdom, the retail loyalty card market has become highly developed within a very short space of time. Whilst several retailer schemes have existed for a number of years, it has been the relatively recent launch of loyalty card initiatives by the main food retailers that has had a significant impact on this market. Using data from RSLâs Strategic Initiatives Monitor (Simon), an independent monitor of loyalty card schemes, supplemented by qualitative follow-up interviews, this paper examines consumersâ usage of and attitudes towards loyalty card schemes and to what extent they are influencing store choice and in-store behaviour. The paper also briefly examines the changing role of research in the light of retailersâ increasing sophistication in sourcing and analysing data from their own loyalty card databases.
In the Czech Republic, internationalisation of retail structures has become the topic of the day. More and more multinationals are entering the Czech market. This paper provides an analysis of latest developments and an overview of the increasing market competition. Strong local chains have established a strategic alliance known as Czech Marketing Distribution in 1996 to face this heavy attack from abroad. Consumer research (conducted by INCOMA Praha) should help this alliance to better understand the shopping patterns of Czech consumers and to apply appropriate measures in their subsequent business strategy.
The American economy is perhaps in the best condition it has been in the past fifty years. The same cannot be said of retailing, which has been struggling for three years. The struggle revolves around a changing competitive environment as well as consumer demographics and attitudes. For relief from this competition, retailers are beginning to create a strategy for gaining entrance to foreign markets. On a positive note, they see their organizations as leading the world in the use of technology and believe many of their merchandise formats are superior. Most of all, retailers in the United States see a crumbling of traditional protectionism in the world and an acceptance of more free enterprise. The people charged with leading the American firms into the global marketplace, the research directors, face the biggest challenge of all. Once outside of their own country, they are forced to deal with a learning curve that needs a lot of work. Some smart entrepreneurial market research firm will no doubt find some new customers.
There are some geographical regions where the changing retail scene was, or is, a kind of revolution. The central and eastern European countries go from centrally planned and supplied retail systems through privatisation to the phase of initial trade consolidation. This last phase is still far from established markets like Hungary. The paper focuses on Hungary, examining the differences of the fast Moving consumer goods (fmcg) grocery retail structure of Hungary and various western and central European countries. Based on the number and turnover importance of food stores with a selling area less than 100m 2 , Hungary seems to be moving towards the southern European retail structure. The transition from a mostly state-owned retail system to a demand driven free market was made within six to seven years. This Paper models the steps of transformation and its characteristics. Although it is difficult to forecast how long it will take to reach the trade concentration of the western European countries, factors influencing the speed of development are mentioned.
This paper describes the revolution in petrol retailing in the United Kingdom; a revolution initiated by the major supermarket operators and which has resulted in the oil companies losing 25 % of their market share and f 1 billion in revenues. The paper looks at the casual effects of the revolution, analyses the consequences, and makes projections as to how other retailing sectors, such as financial services, clothing and consumer services are vulnerable to attack from the supermarket operators.
The paper studies how the deregulation of Sunday trading changed opening hours and shopping habits. In Sweden, shop opening hours were deregulated in 1972. The evidence presented in this paper shows that in Sweden, Sunday opening has become common especially among grocery stores. Furthermore, evidence on shopping habits in Sweden suggests that on Sundays consumers shop predominantly for groceries. Deregulation of Sunday trading is often linked with recreational shopping, but the evidence presented in this paper gave little support for these views.
As we know, all that has changed and we now have a very cautious, discerning and rational shopper. The push economy has finally become the pull economy. Just as marketing has become a business term, category management is becoming the business term of the next millennium. As a consequence, researchers need to be aware of the different research methods used and the importance of research in the category management process. This paper describes the approach adopted by Van den Bergh Foods in using research in their category management process.