4 Challenges for Research: Making the Case for Distribution

waitrose
At Tangible we have had the good fortune of working on research, marketing and strategy projects with leading brand owners across many categories and sectors for over 15 years. We enjoy the variety, we benefit from the privilege of being able to step back to get a broad perspective on some of the key challenges faced by similar and different businesses, and we like to pass on our views and experiences whenever we can.

So here we are sharing what we have identified as 4 current challenges across 3 key sectors of FMCG, Retail and Hospitality over the next week, starting with FMCG:
 

1. Making the Case for Distribution

 

In FMCG there is there is renewed focus on achieving growth through new product innovation. Identifying innovation platforms, developing breakthrough ideas and filling the pipeline with new products are some of the key activities in the briefs we are working on. However, the biggest common challenge we see brand owners face is not how to create the new ideas, but how to get the npd listed.

Getting it onto the market and giving it the chance to deliver the success predicted by research and forecasting is the last stage of the process, but often seems to be frustrated by under resourced buying teams tasked with reducing range sizes and category space.

Nothing beats a combination of inspired thinking, infectious enthusiasm and high levels of marketing support when it comes to the sell in. Research can help too, especially if it is deployed up front to provide evidence of the consumer need the new idea is addressing and at the end as part of the business case to the customer to help give independent validation of the benefits to them of listing and space allocation.
 

We’ll be back on Monday to share Challenge #2: Idenitfying Value Drivers in retail, in the meantime if you want more information about the challenge to FMCG please get in touch.