No more sitting on the fence
The right shelf space balance for multinational product ranges
Wolfgang Frost & Thomas Rodenhausen
Abstract
Shelf Space is a scarce resource both for retailers and manufacturers. For multinational manufacturers, there is often an additional challenge: On the one hand, a line-up must fulfill specific needs of local customers to optimize sales from restricted shelf space. On the other hand, nationally specific line-ups delimit possible economies of scales in the production heavily. If an optimal trade-off between these two requirements can be found, it creates the opportunity to realize these economies of scale without diluting sales.For Sara Lee, a manufacturer active on 200+ national markets, this was the situation in Europe with only minimal overlap of Sara Lee's country-specific portfolios in several categories. MediaTransfer AG NR&C developed a novel approach to help Sara Lee to face this challenge successfully, combining tracking of shopping behaviour on a virtual shelf with conventional concept testing elements and a subsequent analytical line-optimisation technique.
One of the applications of the research tool was the optimization of the portfolio of shower gel variants across four countries. Weak variants have been replaced with new promising variants, at the same time harmonizing the portfolio across countries and keeping cannibalization at a minimum. Beyond mere evaluation of individual propositions, the research design created insights into the interactions with the competitive in-store environment as well as with the current product portfolio across the countries involved.
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Wolfgang Frost
Head of the market research department, Sara Lee Household & Body Care, Germany
At the same time he is responsible for the Global market research of Bath & Shower and Body Care including brands like Sanex, Radox, duschdas and Monsavon. His professional experience covers over 18 years working both for the market research agencies and international fmcg companies. He studied psychology in Cologne.
Thomas Rodenhausen
Director of MediaTransfer AG Netresearch & Consulting
Since its foundation in 1996, MediaTransfer is focused on innovative research designs and pioneering tools in online market research. Among Thomas’ international clients are major fmcg-, automotive and telecom companies. He studied psychology in Berlin.