Retailers are still reeling from the commodity inflation experienced in 2007 and 2008.  Many attempted to hold prices to compete against the big box stores, as consumers became more value-conscious in the wake of the recession.  The result for many retailers using legacy pricing technology was margin erosion and damaged customer loyalty.

Retailers are facing a new wave of cost increases due to commodity and gas price increases.  Today’s challenge is compounded by a forever-changed, price sensitive consumer.  Harry Balzer, chief industry analyst at NPD and author of Eating Patterns in America, stated:

“It amounts to ‘relative food inflation’.  [Consumers] have so much to spend on food and they will carefully pick-and-choose how to spend it.  Looking for more coupons and discounts, buying more private label foods, eating more leftovers, and generally getting the most bang for the buck.”

When fuel and commodity prices are on the rise, retailers will generally see cost increases across the board.  Some categories, vendors, and products will be hit harder than others depending on exposure to increasing commodity costs.   Retailers with solutions such as Revionics Price Optimization can proactively plan for these increases and automate much of the execution effort, preventing negative impact to consumer loyalty.

How can price optimization help?

• First – The solution is able to maintain margins by identifying less price-sensitive items and recovering margin on these items.  A retailer using our software will do much better than a less sophisticated retailer that simply spreads their price increases across the category or responds product-by-product by boosting prices to recover eroded margins.
• Second – Similarly, Key Value Items (KVI) capabilities within our solution allow a retailer to maintain a sharp competitive focus on the items that dominate customer price perception while remaining non-KVI items can be given greater latitude to respond to margin pressure.
• Third – Because costs change progressively over time (not necessarily all at once), it is important to maintain size/price relationships and brand-to-brand/PLG pricing relationships.  This is another area where Revionics finds ways to recover margin while maintaining overall pricing alignment and consistency.  In comparison, a less sophisticated approach would reactively apply cost increases without aligning pricing relationships over time.  Worse, such an approach may fail to consider the total effect of price movement across related items.
• Finally – Price optimization dynamically reconciles margin goals with customer sensitivity.  As costs increase, price optimization will attempt to recover profit, but the solution may not recover penny-for-penny costs in recognition of the elastic effect of price on consumer demand.  The Revionics solution can also recognize increased customer price sensitivity over time in the face of rising prices and will respond by taking greater margin compression on items and categories where customers show increasing sensitivity – recovering more margin on less price-sensitive items and categories.

These are just a few examples of how retailers with the right arsenal of tools can proactively and effectively manage cost increases while protecting profits.  This blog has focused primarily on Everyday Pricing, but more solutions are available for TPR, Promotions, and Markdowns.  Please comment, or reach out to us at info@revionics.com for more information.

Markdowns are sometimes seen as a way to just push out unwanted inventory and clear space for more desirable products.  Here are some questions and thoughts to consider…

Do you have thoughtful merchandising strategies for markdowns?

As part of the product and pricing lifecycle, the markdown strategies are important for capturing revenue at the end of a products life on your selves.  Consider that varying strategies affect price image, how much inventory you will sell, and how much revenue you will get for that inventory.  Whether the event is an aisle reset, product discontinuation, or seasonal clearance, your pricing actions are seen and heard by your customer.

Is your markdown approach to just move out inventory?

Today with price optimization software, one can review the impact of a strategy to move inventory, capture sales, or a blend of both. Many organizations just use markdowns as a way to move out the final inventory, when really one can make better fact based decision regarding different markdown cadences (steps, dates, and prices) and a forecasted capture rate (percent of the original retail value) of the inventory sell through. So, don’t sell yourself short!

Are you taking advantage of localization?

Most organizations just set a national price point to certain types of merchandise as a way to reduce store effort at the shelf level. For some products, this approach could be the best, yet for most products, knowing the inventory position, consumer demand, and each product’s elasticity at that location could yield much stronger performance.  Developing a markdown pricing approach that takes this localization into account can help drive from selling our products short to driving better bottom line.

Are you measuring and managing your results to meet the financial budget?

Many of the markdown mechanisms are used to just meet the budget given and little fact finding to verify the viability, sort of a “this historical performance with some management percentage added in”.  With what-if simulation, setting strategies, bringing in inventory positions, developing markdown specific price elasticities, a markdown event can be planned and more fact based.  As the event is in-flight, the actuals performance can be tracked and the event re-optimized based on localized changing demand patterns.  This yields real-time feedback and responsiveness.  In addition, measuring forecasted to actual performance against the budget, allows the discussion with management and finance to take on a whole new meaning.

In summary, your markdown strategy can be enhanced with markdown price optimization to turn “final clearance of inventory” into a driving revenue capture pricing action.

Learn more about Revionics’ Markdown Optimization solutions.

Category Management is undergoing a quiet revolution. Gone are the days when a category manager could trust in intuition and experience alone. The new generation is embracing Retail Science to make better price, promotion, merchandise and assortment decisions. Retail Science applies sophisticated data analysis to help better understand what customers want. Data sources include Point-of-Sale (POS), Transaction Log (TLOG), competitive pricing, panel, syndicated, weather, demographic, and location attributes. Data cleansing, quality assurance tests and outlier analysis are essential for measuring causal relationships. The result is a demand model that accounts for price elasticity, promotional lift, merchandising, seasonality, cannibalization, affinity, space, and assortment. Category managers use this demand model to evaluate and compare scenarios. For example, a supplier may offer a incentive to promote Cheerios. The category manager can evaluate the category profit accounting for vendor incentives, cannibalization, and affinity.  This analysis shows how cannibalization of private label erodes category margin. Even the impact on loyalty customers can be evaluated in terms of basket size and trip frequency by customer segment.

Other examples where Category Managers are leveraging Retail Science include:

Store-Zone Clustering.  Stores in proximity to competitors, population density, household income, median age, and other factors influence customer behavior and sensitivity to price. Store zone clustering identifies the optimal store zoning and can improve profit by 1% of sales for some retailers (higher profits have been realized and this benefit is above and beyond that from price optimization alone). This analysis is based on category-store price elasticity and takes into account demographic data, competitor data, and store attributes. The principal components driving a store into one cluster versus another are evident from this analysis.  For example, zone one may be characterized by highly price sensitive, middle-income, densely populated, customers with a given ethnicity ratio and strong competition from Walmart within 2.5 miles. The strength of each of these factors in driving a store into a given zone is evident from the analysis.

KVI Items. Key Value Items (KVI) have the greatest influence on customer price perception and represent an important segment of a retailer’s business. Frequently, just 10% of a retailer’s items account for 90% or more of customer price perception and have the greatest influence on traffic. These items can come from many different categories and there can be multiple groupings. Examples include highly sensitive items, competitive items, traffic drivers, and basket builders. Retail Science can be applied to identify the top KVI items combining item profit and sales with price elasticity, market-basket analytics, and syndicated data. Understanding which items are the “true KVIs” and positioning them aggressively yields the most return while allowing the freedom to price non-KVI items in line with margin targets.

Pricing. Price elasticity relates the change in units to the change in price as indicated in the table below.

Price Elasticity      Price Change      Unit Change

1.0                          -10%                     +10%

2.0                          -10%                     +20%

0.5                         +10%                        -5%

Retailers can realize more profit and sales by increasing the price on items with low price elasticity and decreasing the price on items with high elasticity. The first step is to identify the category role and strategy. For example, some categories are identified as Convenience, Traffic Drivers, Margin Enhancer, and Turf Protector in this source from AC Nielson:

Consumer-Centric Category Management.  Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006

Willard Bishop is especially strong in working with retailers to identify how best to define category roles and map those roles into strategies that can leverage Retail Science. These strategies and the science account for Private Label to National Brand Gaps, Good-Better-Best relationships, Ending Numbers, Price Chance Frequency, Minimum/Maximum Price Change rules, Price-Per-Unit relationships, Margin Targets and Competitive Price Index. Competitive prices can be collected or purchased from Rival Watch.

Promotion. Promoting the wrong product or the wrong offer erodes category profitability. As mentioned earlier, Retail Science can be used to evaluate supplier incentives. It can also be used to recommend the best items to promote and at what offers. During the planning stage a Category Manager can use the Demand Model to evaluate “what if” scenarios. For instance, which is the best item to promote on the front page in a major feature? What is the impact of merchandising the item in an end cap or a display? Is BOGO better than 10 for $10?  In all of these comparisons the Retail Science accounts for supplier funds, cannibalization, and affinity.

Category Managers are now using Retail Science to segment loyalty customers and identify the best one-to-one offers that will drive basket profit and trip frequency. Market Basket Analysis is applied to identify item-level affinity to understand how much a promotion on meat will drive sales in produce.

Retail Science benefits Category Managers best when it is imbedded in tools that support Supplier Collaboration and Ad Planning including pre-press layout with integration to publication tools such as Adobe InDesign or Quark.

Markdown. Simple clearance strategies such as 25%, 50%, and 75% markdown spread across three months leave money on the table. Too often items are marked down when demand is sufficient to clear inventory. Similarly, there are items with large inventory that require deeper or earlier markdown to maximize profit. Retail Science identifies the best markdown amounts and dates. Category managers can specify strategy objectives such as clear inventory or maximize profit. Coherence rules can be applied to simplify signage and shelf tags.

Assortment & Space.  Space and price are inseparable. Suppose that demand is high for a particular item, so high that the retailer often has a whole in the shelf. Is it better to increase the price, or to add another facing?  Retail Science can be used to jointly optimize space and price. In some cases the recommended number of facing is zero—meaning that it is recommended that the item be removed from the assortment. Retail science can also leverage syndicated data from IRI to recommend new items to add to the assortment. At a macro level, categories that need more or less linear space are identified.

Price, Promotion, Markdown, Assortment, and Space impact category profit and sales. A single Product Lifecycle application that integrates all of these applications is extremely useful to Category Managers. For one, a single integrated platform can identify and resolve pricing conflicts. Such as, a 10 for $10 promotion on August 1 would be in conflict with an Everyday price change from $1.19 to $0.89 on July 25. An integrated platform can also provide a single unified forecast which can be compared with the financial plan and actual profit and sales.

At Revionics we specialize in a SaaS-based Product Lifecycle platform that is putting the power of Retail Science into the hands of the next generation of Category Managers.

One common characteristic I have found with many retailers that I have worked over the last six years is that category managers spend far too much of their valuable time on price maintenance.   Strategy often takes a backseat to other priorities such as shifting costs and competition.  In many instances where the category managers have pricing analysts to assist, the majority of their time is spent on price oversight and approval as well as negotiating promotional events with vendors and still not strategic.

When you consider the tasks and processes involved in price management, a single vendor cost change may trigger tens to hundreds of price changes within a category. Line pricing rules, size parity, zone pricing, private label shielding and other category rules must be followed in order to maintain role hierarchy and intent for the affected category. Without automation, a simple cost changes prove to be a very time consuming challenge.

Over the last ten years many retailers have looked to life cycle price management and optimization vendors to automate these price management processes.  This technology has been embraced by several leading retailers and help to further cost justification of price optimization. Through use of a price optimization system, these retailers have found that their category managers can shift their focus to work more closely with their vendors. Time spent previously managing tactical tasks can now be dedicated to strategic pricing practices. Additional time saving benefits can be gained when implementing vendor collaboration software.

When I work with a retailer evaluating price optimization, I almost always recommend a “crawl, walk, run” approach when evaluating life cycle price optimization solutions.  Just because the system can optimize pricing does not mean it has to Day One. Start easy with automation.  Once users become more comfortable with the system functions and navigation, then try optimization for few categories and monitor the benefits. When confident of the systems benefits, the pricing team can decide to roll out price optimization across all categories, or go even further and investigate promotional and clearance or markdown optimization.

While the sizzle of an optimization solution is the science, there is a great deal of value provided by automating pricing tasks.  Ask yourself this question the next time you are dealing with price management functions “Is there something that I can be doing to better my category performance and make my pricing activities be more strategic?”

Price optimization works best when the retailer is confident in their pricing strategy for their business and the product categories they carry.  For this reason, we chose to blog about the importance of defining category role when approaching any pricing initiative – whether your initiative is around everyday price optimization, promotion planning, and markdown optimization.

The industry standard model for Category Management is an 8 step process. The 8 steps are:

1.    Define the Category (i.e. what products are included/excluded).
2.    Define the role of the category within the retailer.
3.    Assess the current performance.
4.    Set objectives and targets for the category.
5.    Devise an overall Strategy.
6.    Devise specific tactics.
7.    Implementation.
8.    The eighth step is one of review which takes us back to step 1.

First, we will focus on the importance of step 2 in building an optimal pricing strategy.  Defining the role of the category within the retailer is really done by defining what is important to your customers, and knowing what is important to your customers is critical in defining your pricing strategy.  There are ways to get to this information in your historical sales data by measuring key metrics to truly define what is important to your customers.

Once you’ve defined your category roles you can then set a pricing strategy for each role.  That way you are pricing all of the items that are most important to your customer according to desired outcome.  Your customers will be happy if the items important to them are priced correctly and reward you by coming back.  Some things to consider would be the competitive position of each of those roles, elasticity of the products in each role, and goals for each category role.

In addition to the Revionics Life Cycle Pricing Solutions, our Business Consultants are available to help our customers identify and shape the roles of their categories.  Category Role Definition is one of our more popular services, as retailers fight to keep share of wallet while protecting margins.  Category Role Definition includes determining the proper category role and subsequent strategy based on elasticity, demand forecasting, and promotional lift from your historical sales data.  Revionics can then directly implement those strategies within our Price Optimization solution by configuring the system to reflect the retailer’s strategy.  For more information please visit www.revionics.com or email us at info@revionics.com.

Revionics’ mission is to increase retailer profitability by enabling better management of price, promotion, markdown, inventory, assortment & space. Revionics is unique in that we offer an integrated solution that shares a common demand forecast across all of these functions. In this article, I answer the question, “Why is an integrated solution better than individual point solutions?”

First, let’s cover some basics. A demand forecast is more accurate if it accounts for all price, promotion, and markdown activities. For example, demand will increase during promotions. In addition, the demand forecast must account for seasonality including holiday lift, day of month, and special events. Finally, the demand forecast must reflect cannibalization and affinity. For example, we’ve seen promotions on Campbell’s Tomato soup cannibalize Chicken Noodle and drag along sales of Kraft American Cheese used to make toasted cheese sandwiches.

Second, let’s not confuse a demand forecast with a sales forecast. A demand forecast estimates how much you might sell, while a sales forecast estimates how much you will sell. Why is there a difference? In short:  assortment , space and inventory. Let’s take an example:  Suppose that the demand forecast for Tide Detergent is 30 units in a given store for a given week. However, the assortment planogram allows just one facing with a shelf capacity of 7 units. The workforce plan calls for the shelf to be replenished every three days. At most you can sell only 21 units during a given week. The sales forecast must be lower than the demand forecast.

Let’s consider just pricing for a moment. Suppose we are modeling and optimizing prices in a category. The prices will be implemented in the store in six weeks. Optimization recommends decreasing the price on Hefty Recycling Bags. However, the assortment plan shows that these bags will be discontinued in 8 weeks. An integrated solution won’t waste the price change on an item that is being discontinued—a point solution would.

When it comes to assortment and space planning, integration with price, promotion, and markdown is easy to justify. Any item that is discontinued from the assortment should automatically go on markdown. Assortment and space optimization depends on price and promotion. For example, an item may be eliminated from the assortment if its price is high, but at a lower price, it might make the assortment cut. An item may have enough facing for everyday pricing, but what if the item is promoted frequently. Then the shelf space should be supplemented by either an end cap or a display. Or, suppose an item does not make the assortment cut, until one considers the lucrative vendor incentives received for promoting that item.

There is also the argument that if the demand is so high that I keep running out, I may either want to increase price, or increase the number of facing. Which is the best choice? Only an integrated solution can provide the answer.

There are several examples where Inventory optimization depends on price and promotion. Everyone knows that promotions can have a huge impact demand and consequently on order quantity. To a lesser extent, the same is true of base price changes. But does everyone understand how a promotion might cannibalize sales. For example,  an general merchandise retailer might have a location with only 25 packets of Fruit of the Loom t-shirts on the shelves.  Normally this would not be enough, but due to a promotion on Hanes t-shirts, the cannibalization of Fruit of the Loom means I have more than enough.

Another consideration is avoiding vendor disconnects. For example, suppose a vendor offers an incentive and the retailer runs a promotion. The vendor may have planned for 100 cases but the retailer’s demand forecast is 200.  If the vendor doesn’t have the supply to meet demand, the retailer suffers lost sales. This can be avoided by sharing the demand forecast with the supplier thru the Revionics Collaborate, our Supplier Portal.  Here, the retailer can share the promotion plan and the forecast with their trading partners, and the supplier can submit deals that are better tailored to meet demand expectations.

An integrated solution solves many problems for both the retailer and the vendor. While this all may seem too advanced, consider the pace of change in the world today. Revionics is actively driving change and delivering tomorrow’s solutions today.

In retail, there is a key piece of information that contains a lot of power, that piece of information is the price sensitivity of a given item in a given store. Obtaining that piece of information is a very difficult thing to do.  If it weren’t for seasonal effects, holidays, promotions, out of stock conditions, low unit movement and a variety of other challenges, it actually would not be too difficult to determine.  After all, it is simply a prediction of how much the unit sales will change given a change in price.

With this information in hand, there are a variety of tasks that can be done more efficiently. One example is the identification of key value items, or KVI’s.   For retailers without optimization technology, the way this is accomplished today is by looking for the items that have the highest turn.  Unfortunately, this method shows items that are hot sellers, but these items may also be insensitive to price changes.  When retailers are able to obtain actual price sensitivity by leveraging optimization science, it is very interesting to review the sensitivity of these high moving items; there are always items in that list that are not price sensitive.  What does that tell you?  Often there are low margins on high moving items that could easily withstand a price increase without impacting consumer demand.   Retailers could be making up valuable profit dollars on these items.

Another key insight that can be gained from retail data is more accurate forecasting of revenue, profit and inventory requirements when making price changes or promoting items.  This accurate forecast is used when modeling and planning merchandising strategies for a category, department or banner.  Retailers can maximize margin dollars by charging a little more for items whose unit movement is not impacted much by the price increase, and reducing the price on items where the unit movement will increase more in proportion to the price decrease.

Information is power, and a good price optimization environment empowers the retailers with both recommendation and reporting that allows them to improve profits, price image, and customer satisfaction.  Revionics solution delivers both advanced price optimization and price strategy services to help retailers accomplish their goals.  For more information, please visit www.revionics.com, or email us at info@revionics.com.

For the past 2 years, retailers’ private brands have been the topic of much discussion. In the failing economic conditions we are experiencing, many consumers look to private brands as a way to stretch their budget. Retailers have reacted by continuing to introduce additional offerings and manage favorable pricing positions that have also been one of very few bright spots in a mostly bleak sales and profit battle field.

In Europe, private brands have long held a significant position in both sales as well as overall percent of assortment. In the US marketplace, private label has been viewed as a lesser quality or subpar brand leading to a very limited penetration for many if not most retailers. But in a recent private label report, IRI has made the following observation:

1. In the shopper survey, consumers told us that purchasing a private label is a brand-driven decision that involves many factors including their own emotional connection to the retailer itself.
2. In looking at shopper attitudes of private label quality, over 78% of both lower-income and higher- income consumers believe that private label products are typically of excellent quality.
3. Four-of-five shoppers are now “sold” on private label quality indicating that product marketing during the current recession is successfully expanding the positive reputation and reach of these products.

‘IRI Private Label report

As private brands continue to grow in acceptance by the consumer as a viable substitute or replacement to the national brand, retailers will need to continue to drive private label to the fore front of their assortment and marketing plans to keep pace. Successful retailers have begun brand building on their private label offerings insuring the customer’s confidence for the banner carries over to the brand.

Now more that ever retailers are in need of insuring that they have a clearly defined strategy regarding  the relationship pricing between the National Brand and private label item. Price optimization becomes a critical component in the execution of this pricing strategy. By capitalizing on the consumer demand signals of an item, the optimum price and profit potential can be realized from this ever growing segment of the assortment.

Private Label items have gained a significant foot hold in today’s retail arena, and will continue to grow in impact and importance well beyond the recovery of this economy.   For more information, watch our webinar, “Good, Better, Best” by clicking here.  Comments are welcome!

I saw a very good article carried in Supermarket News yesterday written by Michael Garry.    The article was called “Bouncing Back” and it summarized anticipated retailer spending forecasts on information technology.   Read the article here.   I was pleased to see the increased acceptance that Software-as-a-Service has gained given its advantages for retailers.   I was also very enthusiastic about the increasing importance that retailers are placing on Price Optimization, Promotion Planning, Trade Promotion Management, and Computer Based Ordering, all things that are core to the Revionics solution portfolio.   With the National Grocers Association show occurring this week, the article was very timely.

If you happen to be attending the National Grocers Association Show in Las Vegas this week, I want to personally invite you to attend a presentation that I will be doing with Luigi Mucciacciaro, Director of Store Operations for D’Agostino Supermarkets on their experiences with Price Optimization.   The educational session is entitled, “Price Optimization for Improved Profits”  and it will take place on Thursday, February 11th at 9:15am-10:15am in the Versailles Ballroom 3 & 4 at the Paris Hotel.  This educational session will cover how pricing optimization software can be used by grocers to drive sales and profits all while tuning pricing to satisfy consumers.

I want to also mention that Revionics will also be exhibiting on the NGA Show Floor. Be sure to stop by the Revionics booth (#703) for additional information on our product services in addition to meeting the Revionics team.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at tmichaud@revionics.com.  I look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas for the National Grocers Association Supermarket Synergy 2010 Show.

Frank Badillo a Senior Economist for Retail Forward in his November 6, 2009 Washington Post article stated:

“Don’t expect shoppers to abandon their hard-earned lessons in frugality even if the economy starts picking up.  Households remain focused on shopping for needs, and this kind of cautious shopping behavior will restrain sales improvements.”

So as 2010 begins what are the best practices in pricing that remain constant in their ability to generate solid returns?

1. Track trends in customer and competitive behavior and react to trends not single events.

2. Engaging in forward planning that utilizes forecasting tools for accurate assessment of demand shifts over time.

3. Set goals at the highest and lowest levels.  (Every member of the organization should know and understand their part.)

4. Evaluate opportunities with store clustering, customer segmenting, and predictable competitive behaviors.

5. Assign a role and goal for base, promotional, TPR, and even markdown prices and margins.  A plan for total margin mix, sales, and units needs to be known not an accident.

6. Constantly measure the strategies for execution excellence and constantly measure goals against well executed strategies.

7. Learn to understand the principles of elasticity, cannibalization, affinities, and optimization.

8. Utilize private label as a way to maintain margin speed and provide value.  Set proper gaps based on price points that are palatable to your customer.

9. Choose the right competitors to measure against.  Who do your customers shop?  Choose the right items and frequency for competitor price shops.

10. Manage fewer Key Value Items-assess which are the most likely will cause defection if not priced right.

These are just a few that our retail partners are using.  If any of you have best practices  you want to share  please do so.