Скачать или смотреть Category Management - What it is, Importance and Role in Retail

Category management is a way of managing products on the level of a product group, rather than on the level of a single product.

A ‘category’ is a group of products or services that consumers perceive to be inter-related and or substitutable.

Importance of Category Management
Changes in the Consumer Needs & Lifestyle
Consumer needs and lifestyles across the world have changed dramatically over the past decade.
Retailer and suppliers have been forced to better understand consumer needs and to meet those needs more efficiently.
2. Competitive Pressure
Retailers have to be all the more competitive due to emergence of new and big formats of retail like the hypermarkets.
In order to compete effectively against these new forms of competition, retailer has to carefully devise and implement his categories accordingly.
3. Economic and efficiency considerations
The increasing pressure on profitability makes it necessary for the retailers to focus on controlling of costs.
Category management can help in achieving greater economic efficiencies.
4. Advances in information technology
Retailers can share and exchange huge amount of information with the help of IT.
He can obtain, organize, access, analyze and act upon data required for effective category management.

Category Management Process
Define the Category
Define the Role of the Category within the retailer
Assess the Current Performance
Set Objectives and Targets for the category
Devise an Overall Strategy
Devise Specific Tactics
Implementation
Review

Role of Category Captain
The entire process of category management revolves around the partnership between the supplier and the retailer.
Many retailers follow the method of appointing category captains to develop a category and further partnership.
The retailers select a vendor to help them manage a particular category.
The vendor, known as the category captain, works with the retailer to develop a better understanding of shopping behavior, create assortments that satisfy consumer needs, and improve the profitability of the merchandise category.

Category Captain – Roles & Responsibilities
Planogram or modular responsibilities
Weekly reporting of category results/key sales data (pricing/promotion/assortment)
Market place analysis to determine whether a retailer is winning or losing, and providing insights as to why.
Strategic yearly review of the category for insights into needed tactics and strategies.
Ad hoc analysis per buyer requests

Category Captain – Advantages
It makes merchandise management tasks easier and can increase profits.
Vendors are often in a better position to manage a category than are retailers because they have superior information because of their focus on a specific category.
They have acquired insights from managing the category for other retailers.

Category Captain – Example
Many retailers and manufacturers in the consumer goods industry practice category captainship and report positive benefits.
Retailers such as Wal-Mart, Metro, and Kroger usually assign manufacturers such as Kraft Foods, P&G, Kellogg and Danone to serve as category captains
Carrefour, the second largest retailer in the world, requested Colgate to serve as category captain in the oral care category.
Colgate suggested that Carrefour restructure the display in the oral care category so as to merchandise toothbrush products above toothpaste products, as opposed to merchandising them next to each other.
As a result of the restructuring, Carrefour reported 6-16% sales increase in the oral care categories in its retail markets.

This video is on Category Management and it has the following sub-topics.

Time Stamps

0:00 What is Category Management?
0:53 Importance of Category Management
1:59 Category Management Process
2:30 Role of Category Captain
3:47 Category Captain – Example