Friday, 19 September 2014

The Scottish Referendum - an indicator of increasing localisation, a global trend towards 1:1 offerings?

Whilst today’s narrow 55/45 ‘No’ result indicates the degree of feelings-mix north of the border, the size of the 85% turnout is a massive signal that consumers want more attention given to their needs at local level…

In other words, voters were echoing a trend already happening in shopping behaviour…

Given the emergence of the savvy consumer, a survivor of the global financial crisis, and their unwillingness to outsource their consumption decision-making-process to retailers and marketers in their quest for demonstrable value-for-money, sellers have had to increasingly make their offering accessible and tailor-made to individual need in order to secure initial and especially repeat purchase.

For instance, assume that a superstore/hypermarket offering is currently made up of 70% national and a token 30% locally-focused product-mix based on very obvious and traditional tastes. As the savvy consumer becomes more accustomed to shopping around - physically and virtually - then retailers that closely match their needs at the right price will sell more…

Retailers have to find a way of implementing store-level assortment, with all the skill and application normally applied at national level, whilst suppliers need to accommodate the resulting store-level purchasing decision-making via additional KAM manpower…

In other words, think Superstore with a national/local assortment-mix of 30/70 i.e. 70% locally required brands, in order to compete with genuinely local retailers, using genuinely local offerings, to meet genuinely local needs…  

A possible answer to the increasing space-redundancy of ‘squeezed middle’ retailers?

For brand marketers, this means moving away from the idea of 100% national coverage for brands, and instead settling for regional ‘patchwork’ distribution that matches local need. In addition, it means a shift in emphasis away from national fragmented TV to optimise the local advantages of 1:1 social media…

An untidy, but pragmatic response to the real world.


NB. NamNews subscribers will already have found this idea and its implementation developed in the September issue of NamNews - Free trial available here


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