Category Vision & Category Drivers

Category Vision

Having a Category Vision means driving long term sustainable growth. Category Vision is a clear statement of what the future drivers of the category will be and how will they influence the value of the category.

By pushing the category to grow through these drivers, you will get a disproportionate gain of the growth.

What should be considered when developing a category vision? The key factors that affect how this category will be shopped in three to five years time are:

• macro trends: growth of envromentals factors and aging population
• consumer trends: rise of individualism between consumers
• market dynamics: growth in organic or decrease in artificial segments
• suppliers’ iniatives
• retailer and/or manufacturer pressures: governamental initiatives

Good vision statements are BELIVABLE, CHALLENGING, MOTIVATING, SHORT & MEMORABLE, EXCITING, and SET DIRECTION.

Category Drivers

Category Drivers are consumer or shopper-led changes in consumption or purchase that will be responsible for a step-change in category growth.

Bringing it to life

Full implementation of Category Vision of Drivers include touching of these ares:

• Winning with Consumers
• Portfolio & Innovation
• Brand Positioning
• Consumer Communication
• Winning with Shoppers
• Poit of Purchase Vision
• Range & Merchadising
• Price & Promotion
• Winning with Retailers
• Channel & Customer Understanding
• Organisational Capability

The Paradox of Choice

"As the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. At this point choice no longer liberates, but deliberates. It might even be said to tyrannize" (Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice).


Making shoppers to chose your products it's like making TV-zappers to watch your ad. 


First of all, you have to be on their shopping path. Shoppers chose the store format depending on their shopping mission (bulk shopping, top-up, emergency shopping just to name the basic ones). A manufacturer has to make sure that it focuses on the right channels with its products. On average, shoppers visit only 30% of the shelves of a store - even if they declare that they visited "everything".


Secondly, your category has to be easily reachable. People don't want to consciously think in-store. If they have to stop to figure out where should they go next - they get confused, frustrated and may skip a category.


Once shoppers are close to your category, you have to make them stop to review the assortment. If it's a destination category - that's very easy. But if your category is preferred or convenience you have to work really hard to make it noticeable.


After shoppers shoppers stop to chose their product - how can you make sure they buy something? Easy: by clearly segmenting the shelf according with decision tree. It's difficult to chose between 200 deodorants & 20 brands. But it's more easier to chose between 30 antiperspirants aerosol and 5 brands. 


Less choice is sometimes more choice.

Point of Purchase

Today I learned one of the most comprehensive definitions of Point of Purchase (POP):

Point of Purchase is the decisive moment when all previous marketing activities stand or fall" (Marketing Week).

The Point of Purchase is any place when a product or service can be bought. It refers to all elements within or around that place. Therefore, when we talk about POP we refer at: fixtures, gondola ends, checkouts, stack displays, central alleys, refrigerators.

The POP is extremely important as 70% of the decisions are made at POP level. Generally speaking, for FMCG categories:

• one third of the decisions are solely made outside of the store - the shoppers come with the item in mind and leaves with the same item in shopping basket;
• one third of the decisions are made at shelf levels. Buying decision was taken because the item "was seen on the shelf";
• another third of the decisions are a mix of the two influences - decision is switched at POP. Shoppers come into the store to buy a certain brand or format and leaves with another item.

There are two moments of truth for a brand interaction with the shopper / consumer:

• first moment of truth is at shelf level - when the product is bought
• second moment of truth is at home - when the product is consumed.

It's very clear that if the first moment of truth is not won by a brand, the second do not exist anymore; here lies the untapped power of trade marketing.

30 seconds speech

Vaccines market in Romania

These days I face a different type of challenge: at which stage is the vaccines market in Romania and what can be done to speed it up?

I'll start with an overview of the market. As far as I know from public information, we talk about a 50 mil EUR market in 2009. From Ziarul Financiar, we know that the market is concentrated.

So, the main players are Sanofi Avensis, GlaxoSmithKline, OM Pharma & Wyeth. 

Let's understand a little bit the route to markets. From a logical point of view, vaccines could be distributed via:

• pharmacies
• family doctors
• private clinics (like Medsana, Medlife)
• public hospitals
• national campaigns (although this is as through public medical system)

Due to refrigeration needs, these kind of products can't be stocked everywhere, so a medical warehouse should carry them and deliver them quickly - a just in time policy is a must.

I'll come back on next posts with additional findings.

Information overload

I've just read an interesting article in Harvard Business Review - Death by Information Overload. The article is excellent and, while digesting it, I found even other conclusions.
The author arguments that the huge volume of information is a constant interruption of people's attention, thus affecting performance. While the author is correct about the effects, I would suggest that the main cause is something else:
WE are the ones decide what's important for us and WE are the ones who don't know to say no to (useless) information. As in other aspects of performance, we should actively have an information management policy. I'm almost all the time connected to the internet and the information I get is just helping me, not overwhelming:

• I almost never use Yahoo Messenger / GTalk during business hours (actually I rarely use both of them). Yes, it's fun to talk with old friends, but the discussions can take a lot of time, there are a lot of interruption (we both are at work and have urgent tasks). If I need to talk with somebody, I just call him/her: it's faster, more efficient and it also improves relationship.
• I never start my day by opening Outlook or internet. I have my priorities, I know them and they are first on my agenda. Do you have urgencies? Call me. And remember that something an issue is an urgency because you didn't solve it in time.
• When I have important stuff to do I disconnect the internet connection for up to one hour - new messages can't interrupt me any more
• Email rules are one of the best ideas. It's a very good feeling to see that out of the 50 emails you have into your inbox - 15 are different standard reports or newsletters, 10 are system-generated by the approving system, 2 are from the director and only the rest of then need your attention.

Understanding shoppers it's a much more interesting activity than any of the interruptions.