Category Archives: retail

Native advertising or news fraud

Last night Media Watch on the ABC did a piece on the “news report” done on one of the 6.30 current affairs programs on a commercial station. The “report” was a 15 minute advertising free  expose on the sourcing of … Continue reading

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Heston Vs Jamie, a retail bunfight.

  It is fascinating to watch the evolution of the marketing of the two retail gorillas, Coles and Woolworths. It is clear what they are doing, setting out to engage consumers with the freshness, range and provenance of their produce, … Continue reading

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10 rules for small retailers to out-compete chains

Chain stores dominate our grocery shopping environment, they have developed all the advantages of scale, and use them to the advantage of their shareholders, by delivering returns, and to customers by delivering low prices. The model works, in Australia 75% … Continue reading

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Consumers and FMCG retail control

Retail has changed, very quickly and in a fundamental way, but not for everyone. Retailers, the blokes with the bricks and mortar still hold sway in most markets, but to varying degrees, and can continue to do so if they … Continue reading

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Reading the consumers mind.

Businesses spend many millions trying to understand the way consumers consider the choices confronting them in a supermarket. With up to 30,000 items on shelf, and some categories having hundreds of choices, it is a key consideration. A mix of … Continue reading

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Renting your sales.

  Walking into chain retailers these days you are inevitably confronted by displays of product, usually at a discount. Most people seem to think that it is the retailer doing the promotion as a means to attract added sales, which … Continue reading

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4 requirements of “Connection”

A pilot program I have been recently  involved with, setting out to  assist the evolution of a” Sydney Harvest” brand of local produce has not delivered the results hoped for. After years of agitation by produce growers in the Sydney … Continue reading

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Sydney Harvest

The produce branding model used by the agricultural so called marketing programs run by industry bodies all  fail the basic test of being consumer centric. Generally they are retailer centric, using grower levies to fund discounts, and sometimes display space, … Continue reading

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New verb. “To Netf..k”

The verb that describes the process of retailers ignoring the shift to digital. Payment, e-shopping, mobile selection of destination, on-line reviews, and so on. The business model is rapidly evolving, whatever your current model may be, nothing is set in … Continue reading

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Value transformation in agriculture

The agricultural supply chain that has dominated the way we get our food has evolved as a fragmented, opaque series of transactions that occur to fill the gap between the producer and the consumer. Many of these transactions add no … Continue reading

Posted in Alliance management, Branding, Marketing, retail, Small business | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Customer driven demand chain rebirth

It is pretty trite to point out, again, that the reason businesses survive is to satisfy customers. In fresh produce markets, this has been pretty much forgotten as the share of the consumers dollar that ends up in the farmers … Continue reading

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Cheap Housebrand or guarantors of quality

Consumers make purchase choices for a whole range of reasons, quality, size, experience, brand, price, freshness, produce provenance, and so on. Supermarkets in Europe have for years been marketing their housebrands as much more than cheapo versions of branded products, … Continue reading

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4 Challenges of Urban agriculture.

As our cities continue to suck people off the land, and grow bigger, swallowing adjacent farm land, we face the challenge of how we feed ourselves into the future. It may not be a problem now, or in 5 years, … Continue reading

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Anatomy of a demand chain.

  This is a far longer post than normal, motivated by some very sensible feedback from the previous post. Bear with me. The “tools” that add value to management of any supply chain, playing a role in the transformation into … Continue reading

Posted in Collaboration, Demand chains, Marketing, retail, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Facial recognition marketing.

What will happen when facial recognition is good enough to recognise a person walking into a retail shop, and convey to a device that persons purchase history, returns, sizes, social media mentions and links, and all the rich data that … Continue reading

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5 rules for FMCG category marketing

I am old enough to remember doing warehouse withdrawals by hand. Heavens. Then we had early data managers automate the process, an evolution that pottered on for 25 years, through  to category management based on scan data, some of which … Continue reading

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Marketing & Social media reviews

One of the foundations of mass marketing was to be able to segment your market, geographically, demographically, behaviorally, brand preferences, and so on. In the old days of mass media, it was really the only way to target messages at … Continue reading

Posted in Communication, Customers, Marketing, retail, Small business, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Death of an “Iconic” brand

This is the first post of the new year, so it seemed appropriate to hop on a hobby-horse, the indiscriminate use of the word “iconic”, in all sorts of situations. My beef today is specific to the food industry. The call … Continue reading

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Manage by customer, by leveraging data

Would you rather do business with someone who knows a lot about you, and demonstrates they have your best interests at heart, or some stranger, enriching themselves? Pretty obvious answer, so why do so few retailers seem to be able to respond?. … Continue reading

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Sales is the core function

 Without sales, all the rest of the stuff that goes on in an enterprise is irrelevant. All the lofty strategies, policies, and well intentioned platitudes are dependent on the delivery of sales for their oxygen. As a senior manager in … Continue reading

Posted in Customers, Management, retail, Sales | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments