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Does China’s E-commerce rise signal the future of bricks and mortar globally?

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I don’t own an iPad. I’ve always wanted one but probably more for the kids than anything else.

I guess I’ve just felt that I had better things to do with the cash. So price has been a barrier (especially since I have three kids!) Not anymore – and mostly because of e-commerce. Why? Because here in my second home of Shanghai they’re cheap – Gome one of China’s two leading electronics behemoths has just dropped the price on an iPad 2 to CNY 1999 (that’s just over 300 of your American Dollars) so ok now I’m getting three! [Read more…]

Myth-busting – “Shelf Space Should Equal Market Share”


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My thanks to Omar K from the Linkedin Trade Marketing Experts group for raising a perennial question:

“What is the relationship between value sales, volume sales and share of shelf?”

At the heart of the question is one of the biggest myths of retail marketing: that a brand’s share of market should be reflected on shelf. Initially this has a ring of logic to it. If i have 30% of the market, surely I should have 30% of the shelf?  But hang about,  should that be value share or volume share? And share of what – total market? Channel? Retail sales? What about share of the profit the category makes for the retailer? Shouldn’t sales velocity and refill rates be accounted for? What about GMROII? And oh,  and where is the retailer’s strategy in all this? So it’s a complicated issue right? [Read more…]

What makes shoppers buy?

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In October last year I ran a workshop called “The Principles of Shopper Marketing” and it had the sub-title “A complete guide to turning shoppers into buyers”. I’m a little ashamed to say that subtitle wasn’t entirely true. The participants did get loads of good stuff: an integrated shopper marketing model; “how-to” guides for research, insight generation and shopper marketing strategy development PLUS we had a great time! But what one question I didn’t answer was “how do I turn my shoppers into buyers?” so let me answer it now. [Read more…]

3 reasons for getting serious about online retail now!

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Most manufacturers I speak to don’t have a strategy for developing online retail channels. Very few have a dedicated team working on online at all and even fewer take online retail seriously as a sales channel. For most online retail is just too small, perceived to be irrelevant or it’s considered as ‘being done’ as part of the management of key customers who already sell through web-sites. But here are three reasons why you need to get very serious about online retail very quickly. [Read more…]