Shopper Marketing as a new vision of successful category management

The conference Category Management 2009, which took place on 19th November in TOP Hotel in Prague, fully confirmed what many experts had felt. Never before there have been so appropriate time for closer cooperation of suppliers and retailers in order to meet the end customer’s needs as it is now – in the times of crisis which has been fully affecting the consumer market. The representatives of suppliers and retailers present in the conference panel discussion have agreed on together with the keynote speaker Jerry Singh. Rostislav Brzobohatý from Procter & Gamble has in his presentation even indicated Category Management as the key solution for the crisis times. The presentation of Jerry Singh, one of the “fathers founders” has clearly showed the Category Management development direction. The new development impulse is not only the pressure generated by current crisis but also many crucial technological innovations. The relevant information technologies and services are more available now, mostly at the one tenth of the original costs. This significantly enhances the availability and speed of information necessary for successful categories management from the view of suppliers as well as retailers. Development of loyalty systems, mobile couponing and other marketing innovations are also crucial. Last but not least the development is being accelerated by the quickly deepening internet penetration into every area of our private and corporate life. As Jerry Singh has shown at the example of few important companies that had underestimated the last round of big innovations – who was standing for a while is now standing in a distance…
 
The conference has also confirmed that category management copes with a lot of barriers that hold its development back. The key one is disharmony of strategies of producers and retailers. In the case of the Czech market this barrier is very big as it can be testified by the fact that during the whole eight years long history the conference Category management still deals with almost the same, “beginner’s”, topics. Many participants have pointed at this sad truth in their presentations or in the written survey among the conference delegates. Especially the fact that retailers represented only one tenth of the participants was critically evaluated. However, it cannot be said that retailers are not interested in the topic ´how to proceed´. Their interest was proven by the record attendance at the conference Retail in Detail/Loyalty Over Gold in September as well as by number of registrations already made for the conference Retail Summit 2010. So the problem surely lays somewhere else – Category Management as a term has not taken hold in the Czech market, or better said it has been wrongly interpreted. In their perception retailers partly restrict it as a discipline defining category items and recommendations for their right placement and display. Others understand category management as something too complex, demanding many funds and close cooperation with suppliers they are not willing to accept.
 
Surely the time has come to grasp the issue differently, better, more pragmatically… The presentation of Jerry Singh was very inspiring even in this aspect. We have a chance to actively use the fact that the new category management concept is shifting more to the deep understanding of the customer and managing the experience he has in the store. Therefore the development focus will move more towards Shopper Insights and providing the sufficient consumer value for shoppers via shopper marketing. And this is the topic the further retail conferences organized by Blue Events Company will emphasize. We are convinced this focus is interesting not only for the participants of Category Management 2009, but also for those who were missing there – retailers, who surely have a clear ambition to survive the current difficult era.
 
For more information see www.categorymanagement.cz or contact Antonín Parma (antonin.parma@blueevents.eu)