Revenue Lift Opportunities from Third Party Labor

For members of the at-retail merchandising and marketing service industry, the question is always there. What is the value of hiring a third-party merchandising company, installer or event marketing company to execute in-store initiatives? On Tuesday, August 2 at 1:00 PM CDT, Bart Flaherty of GroupM Business Science will help answer that question when he presents - Revenue Lift Opportunities from Third Party Labor – the next installment in the NARMS Webinar series. This NARMS Webinar is another in a series of member educational offerings by NARMS – U.

During the hour long event, Flaherty will present the results of a study, and a resulting white paper that will analyze the impact of retail marketing services provided by third party vendors. The findings will cover the impact on the following five objectives: Speed-how fast the service provider is at executing a service, Compliance- percent of stores requiring the service, Quality-completeness of the service versus specification, Cost-per hour and total service cost and Results-revenue or unit lift due to the service. As with all NARMS webinars, the audience will get a chance to participate in the discussion via the live chat function powered by ReadyTalk.

A catalyst in changing the role of marketing science in consumer product companies, Flaherty has been recognized for his forward thinking on the function of marketing in the retail environment. Twice awarded the prestigious PepsiCo Chairman’s Award, Bart is CEO of GroupM Business Sciences; leading the strategic hubs of the GroupM family of companies, including Mindshare, MediaCom. Maxus, MEC (Mediaedge:cia) and includes Ohal, the oldest ROI consultancy in the world. GroupM is owned by WPP, the world’s largest media agency which buys more than $70 billion in media on behalf of clients with nearly one of every three ads seen by consumers around the globe placed by GroupM.

You will not want to miss this chance to add another tool to your value proposition. This session is complimentary to NARMS members as a valuable membership service but is also made available to other interested persons at a non-member rate of $99.95. We encourage you to share this invitation with other co-workers and anyone else who might gain value from this information-sharing opportunity. Click here to register.

Strong Rebound in Retail Worker Activity Indicated By Natural Insight Company Performance

Workforce Management Firm Sees 26% Activity Growth During Q2, Sets New Revenue Record

STERLING, VA, July 19, 2011 — As an indicator of retail workforce health, Natural Insight, a private company and a cloud-based platform provider of advanced solutions for real-time task management and workforce optimization, today announced results that indicate a surge in retail workforce activity in North America. This growth drove company performance to record results for its second quarter ending June 30, 2011.

The Natural Insight technology platform manages the activities of distributed retail workforces engaged in supporting in-store operations and thereby serves as an ideal indicator of trends supporting the movement of product to market. Working with a significant sample size, year-to-date the company has managed over 1.6 million work assignments while capturing over 43 million data points on retail execution. Additionally, Natural Insight has captured over 700,000 photos of in-store conditions.
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Temporary Store Strategy Adapting

During the economic downturn, the use of temporary locations and pop-up stores went from a niche business for seasonal retailers to an effective strategy for some mainstream chains. But vacancy rates are starting to move back to the norm making it tougher for retailers to execute the strategy. Some space is still there, but not in the prime locations it once was. A story on RetailTraffic.com documents the ebb and flow of the temporary store real estate market.

With back-to-school promotions in full swing, plans and negotiations for temporary and pop-up locations for the holidays are going strong. By definition, the article states that a temporary location is a space that is used as a test location that may turn into a permanent store. A pop-up store is defined as a marketing or brand building exercise that can be open for as little as a few days. The author says that definition has been blurred in recent years.

Even though good real estate locations are getting harder to come by, banners committed to the strategy are making adjustments. Toys R Us opened 600 temporary stores last year and converted some holiday Express locations to permanent stores. Retailers like Kids Footlocker, F.Y.E. and Burlington Coat Factory are opening locations for seasonal sales or brand promotion. Build-a-Bear Inc. ran 11 temporary stores in the first quarter of 2011. Burlington Coat Factory may open as many as 100 stores this year. Chicos FAS Inc. opened 40 Soma fast stores at one- fourth of the build out costs to see if locations would work out.

For the members of NARMS PIC division, this story holds some interesting marketplace facts, and some potential opportunities. One of the big challenges for temporary tenants is adjusting to whatever square footage is available. Because they work in a variety of channels and chains, PICs are extremely flexible and can get locations opened and closed fast, keeping costs on budget and getting the doors open on-time. Timing is critical so bringing in trained crews with a broad experience base makes sense for temporary and pop-up locations.

July 22, 2011 IRI/Morning NewsBeat

Below is the list of articles you will find for the week ending 7/22/11 edition of Retail Industry News.

- Could Walmart’s Move Into NY Be Hastened By a Rite-Aid Acquisition?
- Supermarket Shopping List Now Can Include A Driver’s License Renewal
- Sansolo Speaks: New Approaches to Old Problems
- Virtual Payment Options Start To Get Traction
- Walmart To Open A Market Format Near Boston
- FastNewsBeat
- The MNB Wal-Mart Watch
- Executive Suite

Click here to read Retail Industry News

NARMS Board Updates on Initiatives

In a memo issued this week to the members of NARMS, Board of Directors Chairperson Mary Jo Bastuba outlined some of the progress being made by the Association toward the projects and initiatives discussed at the NARM Spring Conference in Monterey. Among the key topics in the memo are: Spring Conference Venues, the Executive Director search, Accreditation, and the RORI study.

In the three months since Monterey, a volunteer committee was formed to help select locations for the NARMS Spring Conference for 2013 and beyond. If you recall, a decision was made in Monterey to stick with Saddlebrook in Tampa for the 2012 17th Annual NARMS Spring Conference. The committee consists of Marc Shapiro, Jim Fulk, Lucas Pierce, Bruce Wisener, Maria Siliamianos, and Judy Einbinder. The goal of the committee is to identify and suggest more centrally located cities for the annual event. Suggestions so far include Dallas, Las Vegas, Orlando, and New Orleans. The committee will look at possible venues in these cities and determine cost effective hotels, airfare and other factors deemed important by the members.

During the summer board meeting, The NARMS Board of Directors spent a great deal of time and consideration on a Job Description for the vacant Executive Director position. The description outlines the exact requirements and experience required to fill the position. That work is now complete and the opening has been listed on several career websites including Career Connection on www.narms.com. Phone screens and face to face interviews will take place in September with the goal to have the new Executive Director in place by November 1.

A common thread that was identified by the division committees in spring was the desire to continue along the path toward an Accreditation program. Although the program was side tracked last year, the Board is continuing to keep the topic on the front burner. Final steps are now underway to wrap up the RORI study. A final whitepaper will be available to the membership shortly followed by a NARMS Webinar where the members will get a chance to have all their questions answered.

These are exciting times for your trade association. Stay tuned for further updates that will be coming to you via email, NARMS Newsfeed and NARMS official blogs Top Shelf and What’s in-Store.

SymphonyIRI Looks at Impact of Gas Prices

Although the country in no longer in a recession, the impact is having a lasting effect on the way consumers shop, and on the way that brand marketers bring their goods to market. During the recession, gas prices played a significant role in the economic cut back. Just when things looked like they were starting to recover, gas prices again have jumped and may now be the single biggest concern for consumers. SymphonyIRI recently published a Times & Trends Special Report: The Ripple Effect: High Gas Prices Bring Pain Beyond the Pump. Times & Trends is a monthly publication that brings thought leadership to both retailers and their manufacturer partners.

According to SymphonyIRI, almost half of consumers are seeing their grocery budgets being reduced by higher gas prices. Forty percent of shoppers are being forced to reduce or eliminate trips to preferred retailers and begin to use more local options. These facts bring great challenges to retailers and CPG manufacturers.

As usual, Symphony/IRI has some good advice for brand marketers to help them combat the backlash caused by high fuel prices. Most of them involve closely monitoring the marketplace and being able to make almost immediate adjustments to go-to-market strategy. The follow-up is to ensure that distribution, assortment and merchandising support is closely aligned with an ever-changing consumer shopping trip mission.

The follow-up is where the members of the at-retail merchandising and marketing service industry come in. NARMS members can help on the front-end with highly evolved shelf-level data gathering and reporting technologies. Mystery shopping, sampling and demos are just a few more ways for manufacturers and retailers to exercise quick and effective at-retail initiatives. Fast and accurate new product cut-ins and category resets can ensure that consumers can make the most of their shopping trips and maximize their shrinking budgets. With shopping trips at a premium, trading partners are going to want to make sure they are on-shelf and in-stock.

July 15, 2011 IRI/Morning NewsBeat

Below is the list of articles you will find for the week ending 7/15/11 edition of Retail Industry News.

- Albertsons To Pull Self-Checkout Lanes, Emphasize Human Contact
- Sansolo Speaks: What Silence Does
- Supervalu Reasserts Commitment to Self-Checkout
- The “Delicate Dance” Retailers Do With Extreme Coupon Users
- Target Confirms It Will Sell Fresh Foods In New Canadian Stores
- Kroger Launches New Website For Moms Looking For Comfort
- Bankrupt Retailer Hopes Local Meat Will Beef Up Its Fortunes
- FastNewsBeat
- Executive Suite

Click here to read Retail Industry News

Gap Goes Social

Discovery, engagement and advocacy. Those three themes help marketers at Gap get a handle on how the brand talks to consumers and vice versa on social media. Chris Gayton, the San Francisco apparel retailer’s senior director of marketing, and Summer Riley, Gap’s director of customer relationship management, spoke about how these three foci are also helping to direct the company’s digital efforts at the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) conference on social and digital media in New York on Thursday.

Read the complete article on MediaPost.com

Supermarket Guru Talks Category Management

Today on the Lempert Report, supermarket industry analyst Phil Lempert discusses the evolution of Category Management and how it may well be on the path to true consumer centricity. The Lempert Report is a three times a week, 5-minute marketing analysis on issues and trends and their impact on the food and retail environments. During this installment, Lempert reports on a Kantar Retail survey on Category Management benchmarks and best practices. Not surprisingly, there is a huge at-retail merchandising and marketing element to the story.

Here are a few of the key points of the survey that Lempert focuses on: Manufacturers and retailers that integrate the disciplines of Shopper Insights and Shopper Marketing are in a position to become category leaders. Eighty-one percent (81%) of manufacturers surveyed regard Category Management as very or extremely important. The top Category Management activity as rated by 88 percent of the participating manufacturers is Consumer/Shopper Insight. The top activity for 71 percent of the participating retailers was Execution Capability. The second rated activity for both is the Ability to Listen.

This data provides the members of NARMS with an exciting opportunity to be of even greater service to the retail industry. Many members have already invested significant amounts of time and money on data gathering and reporting capabilities at shelf-level. Trading partners can easily use these companies and leverage that capability to augment their insight into the mind of the consumer. The fact that retailers are still worried about the execution phase of Category Management is proof positive that a great need exists for our services and that a service gap still exists in order to fully realize successful Category Management initiatives.

There are plenty of good reasons to hire a member of NARMS to execute at-retail. The mission for all of us is to make sure that manufacturers and retailers are listening to what their own research is telling them.

Front End Focus to Buoy Customer Service Efforts

An article in Progressive Grocer recently shared a National Retail Federation (NRF) and KPMG survey of 318 retail executives. Among the key findings are that 75 percent of the executives said improving customer service would be a top priority this year. That result is up from 56 percent last year. Another interesting note was that 74 percent will increase customer insight and data gathering initiatives. This is all in response to an absolute need to get a handle on big changes in shopping behaviors. Keeping costs down is important for consumers, but not at the expense of the customer experience.

According to the author, a new and highly visible place where we may see these initiatives is at the front-end of the store. The check-out experience is a great place to provide direct customer service with fast and courteous help, and gather valuable data as to the quality of the overall customer experience. In fact, Albertsons recently announced that they are getting rid of the self-checkout lanes in all of their stores because they feel the customer interaction is far more valuable.

Increased technology and staffing techniques will certainly be important as retailers try to find the right approach to fit their customer service goals. It may also be a matter of concentrating on the retailer’s core competencies of helping the customer and selling goods.

When it comes to at-retail merchandising and marketing activities, retailers and their supplier partners may find that it makes more sense to outsource these important tasks to the members of NARMS. In-store shelf work takes time and training, trading partners can benefit from the multi-channel experience of retail merchandisers, installers and demonstrators while their store staff can remain focused on the customer.