Building strong relationships with retail partners is crucial to effective category management, but it’s often challenging without a data-driven approach. Category managers must justify their shelf placements, ensure promotions are driving traffic, and demonstrate how their brand contributes to the retailer’s overall sales.
Below are anonymized stories of brands leveraging crowdsourced data to enact positive change with their retail partners:
Electronics Brand in a Leading Big-Box Retailer
An electronics brand invested heavily in its merchandising efforts but discovered gaps in execution during store visits. Despite sharing these concerns with their retail partner, they needed a more compelling way to generate buy-in. Their goal was to produce a trustworthy estimate of sales losses caused by poor compliance.
The brand turned to Wiser to track non-compliant stores and cross-reference this data with sales performance. The analysis revealed that compliant stores performed 121% better in sell-through rates than noncompliant ones, translating into an opportunity worth over $40 million. This powerful insight motivated the retailer to take corrective action, leading to improved display compliance and better sales performance. By putting a dollar value behind specific issues, such as broken display screens or missing elements, Wiser equipped this brand with a research-backed strategy to drive action from their retail partner.
Technology Brand in a Prominent Retail Chain
The VP of Sales for a technology brand was investing approximately $10,000 per store per year for in-store displays. However, during personal store visits, he discovered that key display elements were not functioning. When he presented this information to the retailer, they dismissed his findings, attributing the problem to his visits to the “wrong stores.”
Determined to find a solution, he partnered with Wiser to systematically assess store compliance. Wiser conducted 998 store audits and identified that 700 stores did not have the displays executed correctly. Armed with this data, he flew to the retailer’s headquarters and successfully negotiated a credit and premium display placement, which the VP noted would have been impossible to achieve without Wiser’s data-driven insights.
National Consumer Electronics Manufacturer in a Leading Retailer
A national consumer electronics manufacturer selling through big-box and specialty stores was concerned about “soft” sales and lacked visibility into regional performance. They also struggled to understand store associate advocacy for their brand inside these retailers.
The brand leveraged Wiser to oversee the effectiveness of their field teams, third-party merchandising brokers, and retailer compliance. The collected data provided valuable insights into store compliance and helped the brand identify areas of improvement across different regions.
Along with in-store insights, the brand gathered feedback on the associate’s conversational “path” to close the sale, evaluating their recommendations, knowledge level, and other conversation elements. This helped them evaluate where additional training was needed, as well as the most effective elements that were part of their current program. Quantifying and implementing feedback helped raise their rate of recommendation and noted sales increases following also present a win-win for both the brand and the retailer.
Wiser equips brands with the insights they need to become true partners with their retailers. Our platform provides essential data on consumer trends, the competitive landscape, and shelf performance, empowering category managers to have informed, impactful conversations with their retail partners. Brands can:
- Negotiate better shelf placements and promotional opportunities using real-time data.
- Prove brand value to retailers with credible performance metrics.
- Strengthen relationships by co-creating strategies based on actionable insights.
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