In practice, what differentiates Shopper Marketing from Consumer Marketing?

It is a process which helps understanding the shoppers, ideally where shoppers and consumers are
different people, and using these insights to modify shopping behaviors to the brands advantage in
terms of gaining sales. This may be due to new shoppers buying the products or old existing shoppers
buy more of their products but in both the situations, it influences the shopper behavior.

The shopper marketing addresses to the shoppers, not consumers, these shoppers may have purchase
intent to resell directly or by modification of the form of product but do not intend to purchase for the
consumption.

As oppose to shopper marketing, the consumer marketing pertains to the buyers who purchase with
intent to consume the products rather than reselling them. Consumer marketing focuses more towards
the visibility of the product to the consumers. Other primary focus of consumer marketing is to enable a
brand to interact with the end consumers.

Why Mr. Gupta considered General Trade Channel for the Visual Merchandising Program and
not any other channel for the launch of this new program?

More than 9 million general trade retailers in india at that time held about 90 percent of market, despite
of modern trade picking up, sales from the GT channel kept on increasing due to their excellent services
and skillsets. Due to both the reasons, it was optimal for WCCLG to increase visibility as the GT channel
already dominated the market and had higher performance as compared to MT.

As per Mr. Gupta, what are the objectives of Visual Merchandising Program and how they are
critical to success for the business?

The air of VM was to increase visibility, profitability by creating more Product-displays, BTL activations
and bring competition to the ground rather than having an advertisement war between themselves and
the competition, their aim was to bring the fight over to the stores and win over the consumers by
showcasing the actual product and making it available to the fullest. This was done by the adoption of
aggressive BTL activations at the points where consumers take decisions and change their behaviors on
the field.

Also under the Visual Merchandising program, many incentives were given to the store owners, such as
loyalty program, target based commissions, visibility space incentives and etc.
What benefits retailer, shopper and company will get if they successfully roll out Visual
Merchandising Program?

Retailers and distributors were incentivized on the basis of their performance. For instance if the retailer
makes product more visible, sells more or achieves the targets, gets paid-in. Shoppers get served in a
unique way as the brand is interacting with the consumer/ shopper on the ground level rather than on
air interaction where it is a one way communication. Here the shoppers have their interactions involved
as well, as they meet in store to influence behaiors.

Brand gets the market share and sales off take as more and more product are sold brand is built
stronger. The real reward lied with in the creation of stronger brand image and appeal.

What was the rationale behind the payout modality for retailers? In your opinion, how
payouts can be monitored?

The rationale behind General Trade payouts was to increase the shelf visibility of the products. These
payouts would incentivize the retailers to place them were these products can be seen easily. This will
further incentivize the retailers as the gross margins due to high off take would accumulate to be greater
than before.

From the company’s perspective it would simply mean more sales and brand image. Moreover, the
prodcts were not sold due to their strong brand images but due to being seen, strong brand image
affiliated with the products helped only but not were responsible for the off take.

These payouts were to be monitored through market visits which will evaluate the proper shelf
placements of the products.

Moreover the payouts can strictly be monitored by applying Same period last year technique where they
already had the data for previous year and compared to that what sales they achieved with the payout,
keeping in mind the trend growth without the payouts.

What are the key factors needed to be considered in creating trade tools or point of purchase
displays?

Key factors which needed to be focused upon while creating the trade tools were;

The tools should be relevant to the field as the visual marketing was to be done on the ground

Toold had to provide visual aid to the consumers rather than shoppers

These tools should be interactive enough to grasp consumers attention rather than shopper attention
What are the benefits and limitations of all 3 models of merchandising models?

Distributor model:

Benefits; every secondary sales point would have been tapped as the distribution were to serve
these GT and MT store. Cost of providing the materials would be at minimum as these materials
would be provided to the distributors and these distributors would make those available at all
the stores being served.

Drawbacks; the daily activities would have been very difficult to manage and monitor for these
distributors and fail the model. Poor utility of materials was also one of the threats as it would
have been very tedious for the distributors to manage both sales order services and managing
visual marketing for the firm. Distributors in this case would have too much to handle,

Manpower model:

Benefits; manpower would increase with high potential and all the hurdles in case of any attritions
would be mitigated by the sourcing company. The cost of this model was roughly same as the distributor
model however issues related to the training and managing the team prevailed as these talent hunting
or managing organizations only provided manpower whoch was to be managed by the sales team. The
responsibility for operations and execution was to be dealt with on WCCLG’s part.

End to end merchandising :

Benefits; complete autonomy over the entirety of the project, reportings to be done directly. The sales
representatives were to be trained and decision making power was to be assigned to them hence the
decisions could be made on the real tome basis eliminating any wastage. This model also suggested to
appoint a whole team comprising of its own ASMs and other supporting staffs.

On what parameters Mr. Gupta was evaluating proposals and why those parameters are
critical for decision making?

these parameters were;

1. Cost
2. Experience
3. Reporting
4. Real time data
Cost and experience are the two most important elements in analyzing any of the viabilities of
products and services as the cost elements lets the organizations know about they payouts, margins,
Return on investments profit margins and so on. It is always a question of whether how much
marginal edge does a venture provides.

Experience in the relevant industry would Let WCCLG know for how efficiently can the agency work
in the given industry dynamics. If the agency has already worked for the FMCG sector they would be
acquainted somewhat with the consumer mind set.

Reporting mechanism would keep the autonomy in WCCLG’s hands and would keep them aware of
the progress and any improvisations if needed can be done rapidly.

Visual Merchandising Program involves 3 major management functions: Operational

Management, Analytics and Reporting and Human Resource Management. How these
functions are practiced for a merchandising program in a Pakistani market?

In Pakistan most of the urban landscapes are taken care of professionally, all the Modern trade
stores as well as large groceries have great services from almost every FMCG. However, the lack of
operational supervision is there in serving the small stores. Products do not get in time causing
dryouts very often. Majority of the modern trades have never seen a stock out but the small
groceries in Pakistan face the issues. Ofen the store owners are blamed however, these dryouts are
also the responsibility of the sales managers and territory managers of the brands.

Visual marketing in Pakistan is done in their respective FMCG seasons, for instance, rooh afzah and
tang in ramzan however no consideration otherwise is there for any visual marketing. Most of the
times the products are placed according to their strategic fit once a weak during the TSM visit
whereas rest of the week these products don’t get any visual attention.

Out of the 3 proposals, which one you will opt for and why? Support your answer with
logical argument and rationale.

Out of all three models, most workable solution is manpower model. As it keeps the autonomy in
the hands of the brand and costs less then the end to end merchandising solution. With proper
training and guidance the manpower model can yield greater productivity and efficacy than that of
distributor model and cost lower than the end to end solution. Making it more viable for the brand
due to its greater returns. Manpower model can be implemented by searching for the
representatives with relevant industry experience and a whole new team can be formed for
implementation of visual marketing .