http://brandedpantry.com Blogging on the CPG industry Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:31:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Social, Location, Mobile and just plain Online access to customers, gives Grocer’s and grocery-brands  a better, more effective and soon to be mandatory manner of communicating.  That communication can seal the loyalty deal, or it can push the shopper into a more fragmented multi-retailer, omni-channel , multi-product world.   Today there are ... http://brandedpantry.com/2012/01/20/so-lo-mo-and-just-plain-o-grocery-marketing-activity-offers-sea-change-opportunity/ Overall Holiday sales have come in between 3 and 4% over last year, despite some nail-biting ups and downs and thanks largely to price and hours-of-operation aggressive actions on the parts of many retailers.  After my lone-sojourn out on Thanksgiving evening (grey Thursday see earlier blogs) I hit the upscale ... http://brandedpantry.com/2012/01/10/online-kicks-santas-bt/ These two (in their Jammies) get the award for the "most self entertained" shoppers during our excursion to the Grey Thursday => Black Friday promotion at Walmart. I do believe we have discovered that shoppers want to be entertained, and are perfectly willing to join in and become part of the ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/11/27/black-friday-%e2%80%93-self-entertainment/ In Grey Thursday => Black Friday I detailed my trip in the Grey Thursday event at my local Walmart. I was able to observe my eldest daughter and her husband, two Ubershoppers, in their natural habitat.   When I encouraged the idea of visiting the Walmart, the two immediately hit their tablets to determine ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/11/27/ubershopper-fast-effective-on-black-friday/ Huge amount of chatter about whether Walmart's call to start Black Friday at 10PM Thanksgiving Day was awful, smart or both. I do not know how the sales numbers came out but I can tell you that it was a smash mouth hit in the Lake Zurich Store.  On a whim, my ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/11/27/grey-thursday-black-friday/ The pace of change in the digital to consumer world is quickening, particularly with regard to the most coveted FMCG market place. In the last few weeks frenetic  new world activity has included: 1.      Facebook and eBay ( I did not see that combination coming) joined up with an open network deeper integration with ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/10/24/the-pace-of-change-within-and-across-new-and-old-worlds/   There has not been much hoopla made of Amazon getting physical by establishing consumer order pickup locations at several test 7-11 stores and at several shopping malls.     This lack of news seems odd to me, although clearly any long term strategy is shrouded in some descriptions of the lock-box mechanisms ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/09/29/amazon-gets-physical/   Why not?  Online Grocery Shopping is pegged at about 4% of the combined grocery market here in the U.S..  In the U.K. it is double that.  Why shouldn’t we be expecting a very rapid increase to the 30-50% range over the next 3-6 years? What would prevent it?  What are ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/09/08/42-of-total-krogur-sales-done-online/ Lists have always been an essential tool of the grocery shopper. Lists used to be simple oft-times taking the form of roughly penciled “categories” such as milk on any piece of paper or cardboard handy.  They served as a reminder to a shopper who kept the details about ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/09/02/making-a-list-checking-it-twice/ If one reads the research behind these two claims carefully and interprets the results across the studies, one can come up with what seems to be a reasonable, additional view of actual consumer behavior.  Both sets of statistics could be about right, and perhaps the studies should be read as complimentary. Most ... http://brandedpantry.com/2011/08/04/70-of-all-product-decisions-are-made-at-the-shelfno-wait-80-of-product-decisions-are-made-before-i-go-to-the-storehuh/