MarketDevelopment
Designing and executing successful growth strategies require up to date and accurate knowledge about your market, covering the entire value chain. To this end, we can map your existing and potential Universe of Outlets and collect data from your target market in a Retail Mapping Survey (RMS) project.
The next step in this process is to ensure that the store shelves in your target market display the right mix of your products in the right way. In our Best Practice Standard (BPS) projects, we audit, train and monitor your Universe of Retail Outlets to optimise product execution at the outlet level.
In the whole of Africa, local and traditional markets make up an important part of the retail landscape. However, little is known about these informal markets, given that there is no available database of the existing outlets. Due to a lack of detailed information on the universe of outlets that function downstream of wholesale, FMCGs and Beverage companies often use the wholesale channel to reach the informal markets. As a result, key factors to Route to Market strategies, such as product availability, competitor activity, and best practices, are unknown.
Retail Mapping Surveys (RMS) provide the solution to this issue. Our team of enumerators will go into emerging market areas and map out every street to create a full database of retail outlets. The enumerators are equipped with technology to capture important outlet information, such as GPS coordinates, photographs of the outside and inside of the outlet, product categories, competitor pricing, etc. The type of information to be captured is determined in coordination with the client.
The deliverables of an RMS project include an overview of the outlets in the target market as well as information regarding competitors, pricing, availability, and point of sale material. Such data is key in developing a Route to Market strategy and provides important insights regarding channel classification and development.
As useful as RMS data is, we have seen companies make use of less than 30% of the data. At MDC Africa, our goal is to help our clients make better use of this data and maximize the outcomes of these types of projects. We hand over the data in manageable “bite sizes”, and help define relevant strategies based on the outcomes, including defend/attack, white space, and promotions/activations strategies. We can also take these outcomes to the next level by designing and implementing Best Practice Standard (monitoring projects), Work Force Automation projects, Asset Management projects or Last Mile Distribution projects.
Motivating shopper decisions requires your products to be available, visible, and presented in an attractive manner. To this end, companies invest in creating standards such as planograms. However, these standards are often not executed properly at the outlet level. One of the most critical aspects to managing supply and building sales is therefore to monitor what is happening in each store. MDC Africa can take over this process for you by implementing Best Practice Standard projects.
In accordance with the client, we determine the relevant data that should be collected in Best Standard Practice projects. This can include taking photographs of the store to monitor product merchandising, placement, visibility of products as well as data regarding product availability and stock keeping. We then audit, train and monitor the universe of outlets to ensure that their store shelves display the right mix of our clients’ products in the right way. Collecting this information gives the client more insight into the product execution at the outlet level. This process also creates an opportunity to establish a stronger relationship with your Universe of Outlets.
The store shelves photos that our auditors capture will be analyzed using image recognition. This allows us to provide fast and accurate data regarding availability and compliance, and to easily track progress over time at store level. The information that the auditors capture will be used to provide daily and weekly reports of outlets surveyed, products availability and visibility, impact of BPS implementation, and many other relevant factors. These reports will also provide actionable information for sales representatives to identify which outlets require additional visits or restocking.