Category Management Workshop

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Maximise Product Profitability by Building Cutting-Edge Category Strategy

Category Management is the management of entire product categories as strategic business units, with assortment, inventory levels, shelf-space allocation, promotions and buying all managed as a whole. The practice has enabled many manufacturers to judge more accurately consumer buying patterns, product sales and market trends of that category. By emphasizing profits and sales for entire product groups rather than individual items or brands, manufacturers and retailers can often enjoy a longer-term, joint focus on marketing and merchandising.

This intensive training course provides retailers and manufacturers with a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively implement Category Management within their organizations. Upon completion of the session, attendees will gain a thorough understanding of all the business, technology and resource requirements that encompasses all facets of the business from the importance of the brand to how to effectively collaborate with trading partners.

1. Development of Category Management

• The pioneers: Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Wal*Mart
• The impact of Efficient Consumer Response
• The impact of retailer concentration and globalization
• Future development trends

2. Category Management from Retailer Perspective

• Store format optimization
• Assortment, price, presentation, logistics
• Sales, gross margins, costs
• Out-of-stocks, availability
• Consumer happiness

3. Category Management from Manufacturer Perspective

• Trade marketing versus retail marketing
• Aligning category management and sales targets
• Activation of different distribution channels
• Eight trade marketing strategies to cope with category management

4. Win-Win Strategies for Retailers & Manufacturers in Managing a Product Category

• Retailers improve retail marketing
• Manufacturers improve trade marketing and brand value
• Trading partners improve cooperation
• International opportunities for manufacturers
• How to handle confidential information

5. Successful Category Management Process

• Definition: consumer segmentation and category structure
• Role: cross category analysis and profitability evaluation
• Assessment: identifying sales and profit opportunities
• Balanced scorecard: performance targets
• Strategies: assigning strategies to each category segment
• Tactics: planning activities for results
• Plan implementation: effective action
• Review: measuring against benchmarks

6. Manufacturer Response to Specific Category Strategies

• Traffic building
• Point-of-Sale output
• Category profitability
• Cash generation
• Creating excitement and customer triggers
• Image enhancement

7. Importance of Effective Use of Data

• Consumer behaviour (GfK household panel data, specific consumer research)
• Market share and causal data (Nielsen data etc.)
• Geographics
• Retailer sales, margins, cost indicators, store locations, space management, promotions, introductions
• Manufacturer turnover, margin indicators, promotional budgets, promotion results, introduction budgets and results

8. Effective Analytical and Planning Models (“ENABLERS”)

• Space management
• Direct product profitability
• Account profitability
• Activity Based Costing
• Brandpricing, price elasticity

9. Management of Specific products

• Impulse presentation of profit makers
• Pricing strategy and presentation of private labels
• Availability and shrinkage of theft sensitive products
• The critical success factor of Wines
• The cat-food mystery
• Timing of fresh foods
• Lean logistics of mega-losers
• Packaging of slow-movers

10. Cutting-Edge Strategy for Category Management Projects

• An effective and detailed approach
• The role and commitments of each participating company
• Team members and their work
• Project planning
• Avoiding and solving pitfalls
• Internal and external communication

11. Case Study 1

• A case of category management failure
• What went wrong and the solution out

12. Case Study 2

• Analysis of a successful category management case
• Critical success factors

13. Retailer Buying Models and Manufacturer Response

• Pure buying and negotiation
• Merchandising and below the line focus
• Format management and manufacturer investment in trade marketing
• Decision making unit (DMU) and input of production and logistics
• Integrated category management and retailer-manufacturer teams

14. Manufacturer Organization of Trade Marketing and Category Management

• Four basic organization models of trade marketing
• Tasks of category management, account management and brand management

15. Conclusion: Bring Everything to Action

• Category management as part of the commercial organization
• Day to day working between retailers and suppliers
• How to share costs and benefits

See the UNI Strategic brochure about the Singapore workshop on 16 and 17 October.

See our Case Histories for examples of successful projects with different categories.