Archive for the ‘Mktg – Merchandising In-store’ Category

Do monkeys eat Pringles?

April 24, 2012

Excerpted from the NY Times When a Sugar High Isn’t Enough

Dr. John Kellogg — founder of the world’s largest cereal company had a simple  credo:  “Eat what the monkey eats …  simple food and not too much of it.”

Do monkeys eat Pringles?

Hope so because Kellogg is buying Pringles from Procter & Gamble in a $2.7 billion deal expected to close this summer.

Why?

For openers, Kellogg’s legacy brands (Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies) are under pressure from private labels and other breakfast convenience foods.

Note: Kellogg cranks out about 200 million pounds of private-label cereal a year.  

The real growth for Kellogg, as well as for packaged-food rivals like PepsiCo and its Frito-Lay division, is foreign markets and snacks.  That’s where Pringles comes in.

Kellogg’s CEO says that selling cereal and selling snacks are two entirely different skills.

What the company is buying with Pringles is not just a line of products that is already huge internationally, but a group of Procter & Gamble merchandisers with “the snack mind-set.” 

“When you’re talking about snacks … it’s about someone who came into the store to buy something else and hit a display and thinks, ‘Hey, I’d love to have a can of Pringles.’

With snacks, it’s much more intercepting the consumer in-store as opposed to getting on their shopping list.

It’s in-store merchandising.

It’s retail entertainment.

Whereas cereal is much more about the 30-second feel-good ad.” 

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Nutrition note: According to  Robert H. Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco:

”People who consume sugar are more likely to overeat because “there are signals to the brain that tell you when you’ve had enough; sugar blocks them.

Eating calories from sugar will therefore lead you to consume more calories.”

 Thanks to DM for feeding the lead

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Posted in Food & Drink, Health & Nutrition, Mktg - Merchandising In-store, Mktg - Sales Force | Leave a Comment »

Walk clockwise around grocery stores !

July 14, 2010

Why?

Because you’ll save money.

Researchers have discovered that “shoppers open their wallets wider when moving through a store in a counter-clockwise direction.”

On average, they spend $2 more per visit.

Why??

One theory is that most shoppers are right handed … and like most basketball players, they go to their right better…. so, impulse items stocked to their right along “walls of value” are easier to grab and throw in the cart.

If you are right handed, walk clockwise and the “wall of values” will on your left,  and will be less tempting.

Source: Priceless, William Poundstone, Hill & Wang, 2010, p.149

Posted in Mktg - Consumer Behavior, Mktg - Merchandising In-store | Leave a Comment »

Get those frugal consumers to buy something …

February 26, 2009

Excerpted from BusinessWeek, “How to Win Frugal Consumers and Influence Them to Buy”, by Susan Berfield, January 29, 2009

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For a while, Paco Underhill of the consulting firm, Envirosell, has been telling merchants that there are no new customers, which is his way of saying that stores must get better at persuading existing customers to purchase more. He has also noticed that people more often make decisions about what to buy when they’re out shopping, not before. This gives stores an opportunity: If they can compellingly present information about merchandise they might exert greater influence on consumers.

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In better times, when people selected an item from the shelf, they usually purchased it. Now the average amount of time shoppers spend in the aisles is increasing, by around 20% as they read labels more carefully. That sounds like it might be a good thing for retailers. But Underhill says people are more frequently discarding items in other parts of the store, particularly near the cash register. “They are trading out or experiencing buyer’s remorse,” he says.

Then there is the matter of choice: Underhill says some shoppers can’t deal with it, and if the item isn’t a necessity, they’ll just walk away. “Merchants have to take some control over the consumer’s eye,” he says. “Put up a sign that says ‘Our Best Seller’ or ‘Our Best Student Computer.'”

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Underhill and I go shopping at Whole Foods, a retailer known for trying to entice shoppers with “good stories” about its products. A large sign over the red kale and rainbow chard is titled “Why Buy Organic.” The explanation is probably too long for most people to read, he says, but that’s O.K. It’s meant to make shoppers feel they’re buying something valuable, maybe doing something virtuous.

A small sign stuck into a pile of Russian Banana fingerling potatoes reads “How cute are these?” Underhill loves it. “These are more expensive than Idaho potatoes, so they’re trying to find creative ways of getting you to trade up or try something new.”

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When Underhill talks to his clients about signs, he is concerned with what he calls the dropout rate, or the percentage of people who don’t read through an important piece of information.

Underhill’s work for a spice maker is an excellent case in point. The company had designed a pricey display for supermarkets, and the prototype categorized the bottles as spices, extracts, essences, or flavorings, and had no noticeable effect on sales. The distinctions the company was making were meaningless to shoppers. “Who cares what it is? What it does to food, how it tastes and smells, are all that counts.”

Edit by DAF

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Full article:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_06/b4118045670299.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis

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