Category Management/Leadership

Category Management has been declared dead dozens of times in the last decade, yet the underlying need to manage the assortment, shelf, price and promotion of a category continues to require the input of both manufacturers and retailers. Fortunately the old 8-step process has been relegated to distant nightmare. But clients still look to Knowledge Amp to help them develop strategies to find the fertile common ground where they can help the retailer grow...and strategic stories and tools to enable the selling organization to change the marketplace.

Leadership work can include:

Retailer category goals and priorities
Category vision and strategy
Research and analysis
- Shopper insights
- Performance analytics
- Store footprint
- Planogram optimization
- Efficient product assortment
- Price and Promo optimization
Story and tool development
Process development
Sales training and implementation

Perspective:

"By leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Client Story

Situation: Leading Imported Beer marketer seeking to assume validator role to offset the domestic brewers' power. Extensive shopper and store research into category best practices formed the foundation for selling platforms to the grocery, convenience and liquor channels. Processes and tools were developed to simplify and even automate redundant processes and enabled the organization to perform store specific assortments and planograms.

Client Perspective: "I have worked with Bob for many years, beginning with the development of our initial Category Management strategy. He guided us through the best practices in the industry, the type of shopper research that gave us unique insight into our category, and the development of presentations and sales tools that transformed us from a relationship-based account team to a team of category experts." Andrea Sato, VP Research and National Retail Sales