By 2010 Shopper marketing budgets will have grown by 21% for FMCG manufacturers.

And even more interesting is that international retailers’ aim to have grown their shopper marketing budgets by 26% within the same period. Are international retail chains’ visionary eyes a lot sharper than ours when it comes to the value of spending in shopper marketing?
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The Grocery Manufacturer’s Association in the US engaged Deloitte Consulting to research and define an industry’s definition of shopper marketing and, amongst other insights, reverts with strategies being employed by top retailers and manufacturers in driving their leadership instore.

From this report titled “Shoppermarketing – Capturing the shopper’s mind, heart and wallet”;
3 noticeable international trends from top retailers and manufactures interviewed were:

1 Spending towards shoppermarketing activities will increase dramatically (as compared to the norm) against a decline of spends in other media.
2 Shopper marketing insights drive competitive advantage.
3 Shopper marketing organizational structures drive competitive advantage.

From this report titled “Shoppermarketing – Capturing the shopper’s mind, heart and wallet”; 3 noticeable international trends from top retailers and manufactures interviewed were:

Spending towards shoppermarketing activities will increase dramatically (as compared to the norm) against a decline of spends in other media.

Both manufacturers and retailers believe that by executing shopper marketing properly (read letting their spend in this environment be indicative of the value they have in the instore environment as a marketing media) they can gain a significant competitive advantage in the next 3 – 5 years.

While overall marketing budgets are growing by 2%, Shopper Marketing budgets are growing at 21% and 26% for both manufacturers and retailers respectively.
(Slides1 & 2 – on the graphs for second article power point presentation)

In light of this trend, have you started evaluating the effectiveness of your instore shopper marketing promotions spending and optimizing its effectiveness?

What is the cost to reach 1000 of your shoppers instore versus 1000 of them through other marketing media – more so given the impact of this instore environment to expose, influence & sway shoppers’ decision-making instore – where it matters.

2 Shopper marketing insights drive competitive advantage.

Both manufacturers and retailers are planning to increase their resources devoted to shopper insights generation over the next 3 years.
(Slide 3 – on the graphs for second article power point presentation)

This was emphasised more as a result of the need to revisit and clarify the distinction between shopper and consumer – clarification driven by marketers’ tendency to use the words shopper and consumer interchangeably.

In order to remain a leader in your brand’s category, inability to generate specific shoppers’ insights and continued investment in consumer research insights are going to have to be a thing of the past – after all consumer insights are not sufficient to understand the shopper ( i.e. consumer in shopping mode.)

Are you still thinking that gaining behavioural insights into your consumer is good enough to understand them as shoppers? Have you started reviewing your research mandate when it comes to insights generation i.e. looking into understanding how shoppers engage with your category and how you can improve the visibility of your brand during that process to catch their attention?

After all retailers acknowledge that shopper insights give them an advantage in stealing market share and customers from their competitors and other channels.

3 Shopper marketing organizational structures drive competitive advantage.

Leading manufacturers are creating more prominent shopper marketing functions that are fully responsible for shopper marketing processes, from insight generation to shopper interaction at point-of-sale.

The strategic objective here for companies is to review ways in which they can restructure their organization to ensure designated roles for driving shopper marketing activities. This is aimed at getting rid of the norm behaviour of “getting product listed in a way that keeps the trade happy and advising marketing of your brand’s gondola-end media schedule”.

And of course who can forget the numerous debates between sales and marketing and whose budget is meant to facilitate what activity instore..

Internationally and locally we are starting to notice this trend of advertising and media agencies creating dedicated teams with required skills to support their clients’ shopper marketing activities (Slide 4 – on the graphs for second article power point presentation)

Is your media/ad agency gearing its organizational structure towards this role?

Is your organisation making way for SHOPPER CENTRICITY by allocating dedicated resources, creating specific groups to focus on research, program development, relationship management and the execution of shopper marketing activities?