In the last 18 months, TABS Analytics has completed promotion optimization engagements in: USA, Canada, South Africa, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Guatemala, Australia, India and the Netherlands. The results may or (may not) surprise you...
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TABS Analytics continues to rank among the top of vendors supporting trade promotion and loyalty programs, according to the Promotion Optimization Institute's 2019 TPx Vendor Panorama report. 2019 marks the 4th year in a row that TABS has been included as a best-in-class vendor. For 2019, TABS was cited with this distinction in two categories: Dashboard and Data Management. POI noted that the company is "highly innovative, shows the insights in very consumable formats, and has deep insights."
The TPx Vendor Panorama was developed to help guide consumer goods companies to successfully execute trade promotions at the headquarters level by identifying vendors’ strengths and weaknesses. The report examines all aspects of trade promotion – also referred to TPx, which includes trade promotion management, optimization, effectiveness and analytics.
For some strange reason we are fielding lots of inbound traffic from managers seeking a better model for baseline sales. This has been a persistent issue in the industry for at least 20 years, but only now are the calls coming…odd. For those of you not familiar with the concept for the CPG industry, a sales baseline is an estimate of sales in the absence of retailer price promotion. You can learn more about the concept in this sales baselines blog post and trade promotion optimization white paper.
Just know that without an accurate baseline, trade promotion optimization analysis will be inaccurate, and more importantly many of the decisions made from the analysis will be wrong. Some in the industry will say there are many ways to calculate a baseline (true), and given that, there is no way to tell which model or estimates are the best (false). There actually is a method for measuring which baseline estimates are the most accurate, and if you are interested in the technical details you can find them in this academic paper.
At a time when the majority of consumer goods companies are unsatisfied with their ability to manage trade promotions, and many are still doing so on spreadsheets, the value of a great vendor to help with trade promotion management/optimization (TPx) can't be underestimated. TABS Analytics was honored to be named as one of the best-in-class vendors by the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI) in its 2017 TPx Vendor Panorama report.
The TPx Vendor Panorama was developed to help guide consumer goods companies to successfully execute trade promotions at the headquarters level. In addition to identifying vendors’ strengths and weaknesses, the report offers key insights from the POI survey, and suggests numerous strategies companies can employ to improve trade promotions.
Trade promotion spending is one of the largest expenses on a P&L and can be up to 25% of consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies’ sales. The most widely used way to analyze trade spending in the industry is to use the trade promotion measures provided by syndicated data providers. But, trade promotion spending continues to become less effective at driving incremental sales, even as spending levels continue to increase. Fundamentally, something is wrong with this picture.
The Journal of Research in Marketing (JORM) recently published a paper by TABS Analytics' founder Dr. Kurt Jetta on the impact of retailer price promotions (trade promotions). Key highlights from the paper include:
JORM is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary marketing journal committed to publishing scholarly research articles, empirical or theoritical, that impact all disciplines of marketing. Its primary goal is to develop, promote and coordinate marketing theory, research and practice and bring together both academicians and practicing managers.
The Promotion Optimization Institute recently published its 2016 TPx Vendor Panorama report, covering a comprehensive study of 24 vendors in the trade promotion management and optimization space. Key areas of competency evaluated in the report were:
Of the 24 vendors evaluated, TABS Analytics received 3 best-in-class mentions for analytics/insight, analytics visualization and dashboards. TABS was one of only three vendors to receive 3 or more best-in-class mentions.
At TABS Analytics, we’ve done extensive research on retail and consumer loyalty card programs and how they can damage the promotional efforts of both manufacturers and retailers if not correctly managed. But what gets lost in the shuffle are such programs’ effect on customers. Many Loyalty card programs are consumer-unfriendly for a number of reasons.
Bringing It All Together
We have covered a lot of ground in the last several posts, bringing you full circle through a cycle of data collection, planning, and execution. This final post will serve as a handy summary of trade promotion best practices. If you stumble across a concept here that isn’t clear, then please feel free to look at any of the posts here.
In the past several posts, we’ve framed trade promotion best practices throughout a six-part cycle:
Probably the single biggest key to accurate metric collection is to measure exclusively in consumer units. All the most useful metrics in assessing your trade promotion optimization (TPO), such as revenue, incremental factor, and spend ratio, all flow downstream from this.
Market guide created for CIOs and IT leaders to help business partners understand technology's role for trade promotion management and optimization
Shelton, CT – September 2, 2015 – TABS Group, a leading consumer and retail analytics firm, announced today that it has been included as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner “Market Guide for Trade Promotion Management and Optimization” by Dale Hagemeyer. In this report, Gartner profiles the TPM and TPO marketplace and the representative vendors in it. The guide was created for CIOs and IT leaders to use to help them inform business partners of technology's role in trade promotion. Gartner research has found that Consumer goods manufacturers spend upward of 25% of revenue on trade promotions — and more each year.
