Future-Shock-Keeping-Units

At a recent National Association for Retail Marketing Services (NARMS) meeting, a consulting company named MJH & Associates, Omaha, Neb., presented a series of 69 emerging trends for the retail industry. Many of them were mega-lifestyle-trends, but a few of them hit close to home: "Retailers...are beginning to realize...the value of their on-site traffic. Vendors are now willing to pay for reaching 'consumer eyeballs' at the point-of-purchase. Growth will not only be in traditional areas such as point of sale, but also in the total development of floor space and shelving in the store." MJH speculates that this may reach the point where retailers make as much money by this means as they do via the sale of goods. Ouch. "P-O-S material will become a significant profit center for the retailer. As cigarette manufacturers...increase the use of P-O-S within the store...[they] make it harder for non-tobacco companies to get P-O-S placement due to the amount of money tobacco companies tie into its use." Depends on the channel, of course. And for folks doing business in c-stores, this is probably old news. "During the next five years, retailers will implement store- specific shelf sets based on consumer information from each store." MJH says it will be tried first on products that are economically or ethnically sensitive, and in high-dollar, slow-turning, non-food categories. "The next evolution of this will be the resetting of movable displays in high-traffic areas of the stores based on the time of day." This is a tactic already being used in Europe and Japan. Consider yourselves warned. "Due to continued issues with coupon fraud...retailers will push manufacturers to move the funds traditionally allocated to coupons to loyalty card programs." Hold on there: Why isn't some of that cash moving to the in-store marketing elements that CPGs can control? There have been reports that some major food marketers such as Nestle are demanding that supermarket chains abide by "minimum-performance" guarantees in exchange for trade dollars. Can't hurt to ask. "Within the next decade we will see a government-funded health care plan for the US worker. The majority of skilled workers globally will have health care supplied by their respective governments and consequently the US employer will be at a cost disadvantage." Obviously this will impact every American. The in-store-marketing-specific question is whether the long-run prospect of a national health plan will affect the short-run decision-making of P-O-P display producers. Right now, they are doing some tricky math as they calculate whether to turn to China for production, when to do it and which parts can be off-sourced safely. "It will become essential for other retailers to develop private label products that Wal-Mart will not choose to copy due to limited volume. Office supply stores are aggressively moving in this direction." History shows that when a store brand's product arrives, displays soon follow. Something has to give, space-wise. Third-tier brands -- they're looking at you. "We will see a dramatic increase in the number of kiosks in all retail formats." This is one of those evergreen trends that this magazine has noted consistently over the years. MJH adds, however, that the trend will fade quickly as high-speed Internet access proliferates in American households. "Parking lots will become a key focus of the retailer's tactical use of space to increase sales and/or revenue through means that engage the consumer. Tactics employed will...include the renting of visual space and the hosting of events normally found in malls." Finally! I've been predicting that parking lot P-O-P would be the next big thing ever since Gillette tested it back in 1998. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day. In the September issue, we ran an item on a men's room urinal screen that acts as an interactive marketing device. The manufacturer couldn't resist a bad pun when it named this product the "Wizmark," and we couldn't resist making the pun a lot worse by referring to it as "Lenticular P-O-Pee" in our headline. When we first saw the promotional materials for this device, which positions a brand's visual and/or spoken promotional message at the bottom of a urinal, we thought it was some sort of media stunt. But the product's inventor, Dr. Richard Deutsch of Healthquest Technologies, Islip, N.Y., immediately sent us samples, which I, in turn, promptly installed in our building's various men's rooms, much to the amusement, then annoyance, of my co-workers. As a general rule, a display idea must be deployed by at least one marketer client before P-O-P Times will publish a story about it. And recalling the reluctance expressed by many brands 10 years ago when 3M proposed putting graphic images of their products on to supermarket floors, we doubted that day would ever come for this product. However, we also felt the "Wizmark" was novel and amusing enough to merit a bit of attention and, anyway, there were all those bad puns that had to be made. So imagine our surprise when, from the very day the issue started landing around the country, we started receiving calls from some very well-known brands who wanted to get in touch with the manufacturer. Sort of gives new meaning to the concept of "number-1-to-1 marketing." Sorry, last pun.

Future-Shock-Keeping-Units

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