When you use plan-o-gramming and merchandising separately to prepare in-store marketing, then merge them at the store level, the MerchoGram™ approach delivers irresistible success.
Here are the ingredients, the DNAs, if you will.
First, you must have a sales-data baseline. Good ones are available for purchase from companies like IRI or NPD. They’re excellent, accurately reflecting consumer purchases of automotive parts and chemicals at mass merchants, such as Wal-Mart, but they’re flawed for automotive parts retail purchases.
Why? They don’t contain data from aftermarket specialty retailers, which have been unavailable since these data-collecting programs were developed. The parts specialists segment of the automotive aftermarket hadn’t adopted the checkout scanners required to participate in those programs at that time. Plus, they have been reluctant to share their data with vendors. As a result, the national sales databases for automotive parts and chemical product sales are based on sales at mass merchandisers.
We all agree that sales data generated from the Wal-Marts and Targets of the world do not reflect sales data from auto parts specialty stores. But, they provide a good national baseline — the first ingredient in the DNA mix for best in-store marketing. The consumer buying numbers are the basis for departure for your own operations.
Second, there is sophisticated plan-o-gramming and merchandising software that automotive parts specialty retailers or vendors must own. But its purchase is not all that’s required for this piece of the formula.
Personnel training is necessary. The best software program, even with its most sophisticated facets, is no good to the owner unless there is someone who can use it to its maximum sales potential. Software without knowledgeable users is like anti-lock-brake technology, good only if a driver knows how to use it.
The software owners must invest in training for personnel who use these software programs. The programs, with their extraordinary amount of built-in power, allow many analyses from many aspects of business, both financial and spatial. Evaluation of a proposed plan-o-gram can be cut many ways: to calculate gross sales, to maximize return on inventory investment, to maximize use of space (cutting out “the air”).
Adept users of planning software take national sales data as a baseline. They add in regional and local consumer preferences discovered from sales history.
A caution here: The top selling, most profitable items in a current sales assortment may move from Best Sellers A & B to Moderate Favorites A & B, in volume or margin or both, when new SKUs are tried in the plan-o-gram. That’s OK: your new best sellers are producing higher volume, higher margins.
How do you know what products to try? Ask your customers. Observe them. They will tell you.
Then, employ your very best merchandising strategies to affect how they shop. They’ll change their purchases and be happy to do it. You’ll be happy with the sales results as your selected products move into the “high high,” or most profitable highest volume slot.
Merchandising influences shoppers’ emotions. Good merchandising makes them feel at ease, takes the pain out of their shopping searches and creates an environment which stimulates.
Merchandise should be placed where shoppers can see it easily — at eye level. Merchandise can call to shoppers with shelf talkers or can be located by signage. Products should be placed adjacent to others for system selling — so that the sponges are near the car-wash products. These are some of the good merchandising tactics that please shoppers and increase average purchase numbers.
Thoughtful, analytical plan-o-gramming helps achieve retailers’ sales objectives, including system sales.
Plan-o-gramming is the process of developing a numerical result comprised of so many shelves, in a section of specific length, containing a product assortment that is measured by the number of facings and their various sizes. A good plan-o-gram combined with excellent merchandising tactics puts the perfect product mix on display for customers to buy, happily.
Whose baby is this MerchoGram™, the retailer’s or the vendor’s? That depends upon the custody arrangement in this marriage of supplier and seller.
For retailers employing category management to gain their best results, vendors are taking responsibility for MerchoGramming™. They have the retailer’s data to work with as well as the national baseline numbers.
Retailers retaining total responsibility for their own in-store operations are, obviously, responsible for their own plan-o-grams and merchandising, with advice from their various vendors.
Stephen J. Alexander, president of Automotive In-Store Marketing, is a member of Aftermarket Business’ Retail Advisory Board. To reach him at his Sanibel Island, Florida headquarters, call 239-395-9203, or e-mail, salexander@autoinstore.com.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE:"Reprinted with permission from Aftermarket Business, May, 1999, page 54. Copyright by Advanstar Communications, Inc. Advanstar Communications, Inc. retains all rights to this material." To subscribe to Aftermarket Business, call 1-218-723-9477 or email fulfill@superfill.com.
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