Market Track Research Note Optimizing promotional impact Strategies for incorporating causal data into planning in Puerto Rico Summary: In this Research Note, we will offer insight into how competitive promotional data should factor into your strategic planning process by reviewing print promotional volume, cadence of shopper drops by media type, and category assortment on key shopper pages for the first half of 2012 compared to 2013. Retailers and manufacturers are in a constant struggle to increase sales relative to their competition. Increasing sales requires that consumers choose to shop at your store or buy your brand, and not your competitors. How you differentiate your stores or your brand is crucially important in your efforts to win their business. With countless numbers of competitive retailers and brands in the marketplace, differentiation can be difficult to achieve. Additionally, today s consumers have access to more product and pricing information than ever before, and will often rely on that information to choose where they shop and what they buy. There are a variety of different resources and strategies that retailers and manufacturers use to attract consumers to a certain store or to buy a certain brand. One of the most effective resources is the shopper (print circular). The volume and frequency with which retailers publish shoppers, along with the product assortment, offer types and overlays, and page positioning of products within a retailer s shopper, can influence where a consumer chooses to shop. That said, differentiating your shopper from your competitors should be the focus of your promotional planning process. In order to differentiate your shopper, or your placement within the shopper, you must have a consistent source of competitive promotional information, which will enable you to measure your own promotional strategy against competitors in the market. In this issue of Market Track Perspectives, we will take a look at how the leading retailers in the Puerto Rico market have differentiated their shoppers in the first half of 2012 compared to the first half of 2013. We will highlight changes to shopper volume, shopper frequency, and top promoted categories year over year, and explain how these changes can be incorporated into your shopper planning process for the first half of 2014. www.markettrack.com
Change in Shopper Volumes Competitive shopper volume is a key metric for both retailers and manufacturers to measure on a weekly basis. For retailers, monitoring the relative number of shoppers your competitors are publishing, along with the total number of pages, is important in understanding lifts or dips in sales throughout the year. For manufacturers, volume is an important measure in understanding how often and to what extent your products will be featured at each of your accounts. If your key account increases their shopper drops or pages, did you also see an increase to your count of promotions? Questions like this can be quickly addressed with a simple promotional volume report, as seen in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1: Percent change in number of shoppers Figure 1 shows the percent change to the number of shopper drops for some of the leading retailers in the Puerto Rico market from the first half of 2012 to 2013. Both Pueblo and Ralph s Food Warehouse increased their number of shoppers by more than 75% year over year, while Mr. Special decreased their shopper drops by over 50%. These are significant strategy changes in both cases Pueblo and Ralph s Food Warehouse have been much more promotional in 2013, while Mr. Special has decreased their promotional investment. Looking at year over year page count changes in Figure 2, Pueblo and Ralph s Food Warehouse again saw the largest year over year increases, yet Pitusa and Selectos also showed large increases in page counts. Pitusa in particular showed a Figure 2: Percent change in page counts much larger increase in page counts than they did shopper drops, suggesting that they changed their strategy to run denser shoppers in 2013 compared to 2012. Using competitive volume information as seen in Figure 1 and 2 in tandem with sales information for the same period will help retailers understand how competitive changes to volume affects their sales. For example, if Mr. Special saw a big drop in sales during the first half of 2013 compared to 2012, they can potentially attribute a portion of that drop in sales to their decrease in shopper volume compared to the increases seen at Pueblo and Ralph s Food Warehouse. 2 Market Track Research Note
Calendar by Media Type Figure 3: Calendar view by media type Equally important to monitoring how shopper and page counts fluctuate is measuring the timing and frequency with which your competitors are publishing shoppers. Which day of the week do your competitors typically drop their shopper? How many shoppers per week are they dropping? For holiday or key event periods, how soon before the holiday are your competitors dropping their holidaythemed shopper? These are all important questions that retailers and manufacturers need to address in their competitive promotional analysis. If you find your top competitor regularly drops their shopper a day before you, there is a risk they could take demand out of the market, particularly if consumers make their shopping trip the same day as the shopper drop. Timing is also important for manufacturers, particularly if your competitor is featured in the shopper that drops a day before your promotion. Consumers will pick that brand because it is on sale, and demand for your product could be gone by the time your promotion hits the market. Ensuring your promotions are timed correctly is critical to maintaining efficacy. Developing a calendar of past competitive shopper drops is an effective way to plan your shopper schedule around competitive threats. Figure 3 shows a Market Track shopper calendar for Amigo during June 2013. The calendar shows, by day and by media type, when Amigo dropped shoppers throughout the month of June, and how many products were featured on the front page of each shopper. Amigo consistently dropped a shopper (Insert-Paper) on Thursdays, followed by an ROP on Fridays. This tells any retailer competing with Amigo that if they drop their weekly shopper any later than Thursday, they are likely to be preempted by Amigo. Built out over a 12 month period, this calendar can govern changes to your promotional schedule that will optimize both the timing and frequency of your shoppers against each of your competitors. The Power of Market Intelligence 3
Category Calendar View Figure 4: Calendar view by category Shopper calendars can also be created for category level analysis. Figure 4 shows a category calendar for Amigo during June 2013, showing by day which categories Amigo featured on their shopper front covers. Particularly for merchants and buyers, this type of analysis can be used to explain lifts and dips in sales for their categories each week. If sales for their category suffer when a competitor features the category on their front page, the merchant can share that information with their divisional merchant to negotiate additional ad space. Not only will a category calendar assist in tracking performance for merchants and buyers at retailers, but also can be used by sales teams at manufacturer companies to understand, on any given month, how their accounts are supporting their category promotionally. Typically, what is good for the category is good for the brand, meaning the more promotional space your retailers allocate to your category, the more likely it is that your brand is also receiving additional promotional space. In Figure 4, for example, the Dairy category was promoted twice during the week starting 6/9 and twice during the week starting 6/16. With the additional space given to the Dairy category on those weeks, manufacturers of cheese, milk, or other Dairy should expect the promotional share of their brands increase as well. In the case that you do not see additional promotional share, that lets your sales team know to reach out to their retail accounts to understand why your brands were not included during the big Dairy promotional weeks. In short, the category calendar view allows manufacturers to closely track when their categories are promoted on the front page, letting them know when to expect a boost in sales. 4 Market Track Research Note
Figure 5: Top promoted front page food departments Private Label saw the largest increase in manufacturer share of front page promotions in the first half of 2013 compared to 2012, growing by just under 3%. By comparison, the next largest jump in front page share was Dr. Pepper Snapple at 1%. In fact, many of the top food manufacturers their front page share drop during the first half of 2013 including Coca-Cola, Kraft, and Kellogg s with retailers reallocating their share to Private Label. For the national brand manufacturers that pay for front page shopper space, the rise in Private Label share should be a concern, especially The front page of a shopper has the biggest impact on a consumer s perception of that retailers deals for the week. How a retailer allocates the space within their shopper relative to their competitors, particularly on the front page, can impact where your consumers choose to shop. Figure 5 shows the top ten departments featured on shopper front pages during the first half of 2012 and 2013. Many of the leading promotional departments on the front page Drinks, Grocery-Dry, Grocery-Canned, Snacks, etc. are lower priced departments. This is a deliberate strategy on the part of retailers to try to incent consumers with low prices. Compared to 2012, Grocery-Canned saw the largest jump in front page share. This suggests that retailers have tried to lower the price perception of their front page items in 2013. Knowing this, retailers should carefully consider which departments they feature on the front page of their shoppers. If you feature higher priced items, are you risking losing consumers who are looking to build the lowest priced basket possible? Your promotional planning should include competitive front page category analysis to ensure you optimize the space on the shopper page that has the most impact on consumer perception. Figure 6: Top promoted front page food manufacturers if your trade investment with your accounts is the same or more than in 2012. Essentially, that means for the same amount of trade spend, you received a smaller piece of front page space. Losing front page share to Private Label or competitive national brands can directly impact not only your sales performance, but also how shoppers perceive your brand. To stay ahead of this danger, manufacturers must consistently monitor their own promotional share, and that of their competitors. Having the visibility to identify unexpected changes to share, like those highlighted in Figure 6, will help you course correct quickly, and prevent permanent changes to consumer perception of your brands. Conclusion/Key Takeaways Shopper volume changes can directly influence sales results. Consistent monitoring of competitors shopper drops and page counts will help retailers proactively adjust their strategy to combat changes to their competitor s strategy. Building competitive ad calendars allows both retailers and manufacturers to predict when their competitors will promote based on past promotional activity. Using the Market Track ad calendar view will help identify opportunities to pre-empt competitive promotions during key events and holidays. What is good for the category is good for the brand. Keep track of year over year increases or decreases in category share to understand fluctuations in manufacturer ad share. The categories retailers promote on their front page can influence a shopper s decision to pick their store over another. From 2012 to 2013, retailers have featured lower priced categories on the front page, suggesting more retailers in Puerto Rico are using a low price strategy to attract shoppers. About Market Track Market Track is a market intelligence firm dedicated to increasing our customers returns on their promotional investments. Through innovative technology and marketplace expertise, we monitor and analyze over 250 U.S. and Canadian markets for every channel of trade in order to provide retailers and manufacturers with superior tools to monitor promotional activity, support dynamic decision making and turn information into market intelligence. Learn More To find out how to gain full visibility into the entire promotional landscape, call Market Track at 1.800.235.3781 or e-mail perspectives@markettrack.com. 2013 Market Track. All rights reserved.