What Retail Buyers Want - Part 4
Each quarter, TRKR talk to retail category buyers to find out what’s currently important to them and, more specifically, what they expect from food & drink manufacturers when they pitch to them…
PART IV) THINK BEYOND THE INITIAL LISTING
Demonstrate how you’ll support the product listing ongoing
Arrive with a plan
Start small and scale up
“Very few suppliers actually have a plan of ‘what’s next’ once they get a listing with us.”
“Getting a listing is only the first step - a successful listing argument will contain a plan around how they maintain and support the listing as well as protecting it from rival activity.”
So much money, time, effort and emotion goes into launching a new product, yet many launches fail because they don’t plan what comes next.
Most manufacturers (though not all…) will know to bake in 4 margin-maintained promotional periods per annum. However, this probably won’t be enough on its own.
True, if your new product is truly memorable/quality/different there’s a chance that shoppers will pick it up again. But what if the next brand on the shelf is on promotion when you go up to full price? Do you have enough going on to compete?
What else can you do to persuade shoppers to buy you when there’s a more established brand on offer next to you?
There’s probably no right answer, but building brand loyalty/repeat purchase has to include:
Product…obviously. Which has to be at least comparable to other options
Packaging and everything on it…the look, the feel, the tone of voice and even the functionality of your packaging can all be reasons to want to buy you again. Make the consumer feel good about your brand
Out of store marketing and awareness…from PR to social media and online marketing, shoppers need to be aware of you outside of the store. A rule of thumb we’ve heard is 10% of your margin should be spent on marketing
And if you don’t have the marketing expertise within your business….bring it in.
The retail buyer will want to know all of this, ideally with some evidence to back up your claims. If you can also explain how you’re going to add new varieties and flavours over the next year or two, even better.
Ultimately, anything you can do to reduce the risk for the buyer, will also be reducing your own risk of being in the 95% of NPD that fails after 2 years.
How can TRKR help?
We help food & drink clients get to grips with a category, for existing or potential new products. From market data to NPD support, AB testing to large scale consumer surveys, we bring Insight into the heart of Innovation.
Come and join us on 28th October for our ‘What Retail Buyers Want’ webinar, where Kantar will also be presenting on the latest UK retailer trends. For more detail and to register, click here
In addition. to this, if you’re free for 30 minutes to run through the full TRKR What Retail Buyers Want report, please email mark@trkr.co.uk