Retail-focused businesses depend on merchandising audits to keep track of their in-store availability, presentation, and – in some cases – perception. Companies, from product manufacturers to distributors and marketing agencies, rely on field reps to perform those activities and are increasingly adopting apps for field marketing in order to streamline the flow of information from the stores to decision makers.
Platforms for auditing in store have become a must-have for category managers. Not only are they a key data collection instrument when reviewing and assessing category performance but these apps also assist in implementing category plans. But how can a platform for auditing in store be used in gathering shopper insights so these can be incorporated into category strategy reviews?
Field marketing and retail merchandising are complex sciences. They both rely on data from a large number of geographically dispersed stores and, therefore, also rely on the large number of people collecting such data.
Merchandising activities are traditionally natural resource intensive, from the piles of paper necessary to perform numerous daily audits to the amount of fuel used by reps in their daily routes.
Mobile technology revolutionized many industries and retail is no exception. Working with an in store audit system is now a welcome reality for sales and marketing agencies, retailers, and manufacturers alike, since they streamline an old-fashioned, cumbersome process.
Marketing departments are constantly facing the challenge of being considered cost centers instead of revenue units, even in industries where marketing is front and center – such as in consumer packaged goods (CPG). But how to measure your brand’s growth in a way that will show upper management that every dollar invested in marketing leads to increased revenue?
Knowing your customer is the first step in having a successful business. However, for CPG businesses, sometimes the customer might seem unreachable, especially considering all the layers of distributors and retailers between them. Having merchandisers at retailers performing customer surveys is one of the traditional ways that manufacturers have to get in touch with their market and field merchandising software has revolutionized the way these surveys are performed.
Consumer Product Goods (CPG) businesses are constantly trying to get into the mind of customers in order to develop new successful product strategies. However, while customer surveys are the traditional way to go, they can lead to skewed results, mostly because of the customer already knowing that he or she is being surveyed.
Out-of-stocks in CPG are the situation to be avoided at all costs in retail since it translates purely and simply into no sales. Worse than that, recurring out-of-stocks can mean losing customers for good to competing brands or stores.
Retail merchandising software is a program used by brands, field teams, BTL agencies and brokers/distributors to help them arrange and implement merchandising operations in physical stores. Usually, retail merchandising software assists with the allocation of products within retail outlets, creating and maintaining visual components of products in stores, monitoring in-store compliance and gaining insights about other brands.
