The Savvy Consumer-group – how co-buying makes a difference…

With one of our highest page-view counts this year, each lasting an average of 2.54 minutes, yesterday’s NamNews announcement re Tesco’s new co-buying Wine initiative was by far our most popular NamNews item. It also indicated the high level of reader interest in what could be a new way of relating with a brand’s consumers.

Essentially, co-buying (cooperative buying power) provides a way of aggregating consumer demand and using the resulting power to influence all aspects of the offering (Product, Price, Presentation and Place), with cost-price reduction obviously making the news. (For other uses, see Pepsi, GSK, Pfizer, Sony, Warehouse, Achica and Mumsnet case-studies here)  

In practice, co-buying enables the savvy consumer to identify like-minded individuals, anywhere, all focused on your brand, and share views, experiences and especially perceptions of value. If that temporary grouping can then pool their demands, find a way of negotiating collectively with the supplier, and secure effective fulfillment of the order, then suppliers will have opened up a new two-way route to the consumer.

The new Tesco wine-buying initiative provides a way of removing some of these hurdles and road-testing the basic concept, with machinery that can scale and embrace additional categories in response to real demand, fast. 

It also gives Tesco extra buying muscle, but because of the two-way nature of the new channel, along with the 10:1 complain/praise ratio, the retailer will obviously be ultra-conscious of how they are seen to handle needs at each end of the supply chain…
…a potential win-win-win for consumer, retailer and supplier?

Anticipating the future with Alliance Boots

At 71, Stefano Pessina is obviously a man in a hurry and, although light on detail, he tends to achieve what he promises.

Given the value, and difficulty, of being able to predict the future, a second-best for NAMs can be to anticipate a  major customer's future situation via a combination of the customer's  'published' plans together with the NAM ‘s commercial logic and common sense...

Essentially, according to the FT, the company works for ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’

‘Today’ means optimising the Walgreens’ tie-up,  jointly buying in areas of scale, including generic drugs and goods not for resale. They are also preparing for the launch of Boots products in Walgreens’ 8,000 stores, with trials in certain flagship locations. They recently built a potential 23% stake in a pharma wholesaler (More on AmeriSource Bergen moves in FT, here)

‘Tomorrow’
From the time of the initial formation of Alliance Boots and the tie-up with Walgreens it was possible to anticipate the inevitable moves of fast  global coverage via acquisition, assembling a combination of scale and influence/power in both retailing and  wholesaling, selling  anything in H&B  goods and services that can be legally sold to shoppers... In practice, this means a combination of acquisitions and partnerships across the globe especially in larger markets like China (Latest moves in FT here)

The future
On balance, suppliers, retailers and wholesalers have to anticipate:
- Completion of the Walgreens’ tie-up in two years
- A customer well advanced in achievement of the global ambitions outlined above
- A company needing to work down its 2012 debt of £7bn by £500m per annum
- All achieved by a company that is surviving an unprecedented global financial crisis that has severely compromised other players in the market

Two questions for NAMs:
- How would you play the trading relationship with your company, if you were in the Boots driving seat?
- What can you do today to anticipate the obvious?

Whither Mr Stefano when Walgreens complete the takeover of Alliance Boots?
With a potential 20% share of the action and being the largest shareholder of a £30bn mkt cap company, we leave you with a quote from the man himself:

“I will probably have a certain influence. But the influence is not due to the shares, the influence is due to the experience, and the value you can bring to the table…..”.

Big Brother checking you out, faster?

Supermarket giant Kroger Co. (KR) is winning the war against lengthy checkout lines with a powerful weapon: infrared cameras long used by the military and law-enforcement to track people.

These cameras, which detect body heat, sit at the entrances and above cash registers at most of Kroger's roughly 2,400 stores. Paired with in-house software that determines the number of lanes that need to be open, the technology has reduced the customer's average wait time to 26 seconds. That compares with an average of four minutes before Kroger began installing the cameras in 2010.

Kroger executives say they are continuously improving the QueVision software to better predict shopping behaviour and fine-tune the staffing of the checkout lanes. And they are testing other ways to get shoppers out more quickly, including a tunnel-like device resembling an MRI machine that scans items as they go through, then automatically bags them.

The real breakthrough will be on subsequent shopping trips when willing shoppers can be persuaded to avail of a longer in-aisle experience, knowing that checkout times are 90% faster…  

'Back to Normal' or a 100% reduction in meat imports?

                                                    Advert in The Times Saturday May 4th 2013

Sunday Times 5th May 2013

Tesco store within days of beef crisis

All is changed, changed utterly, 

A terrible beauty is born....

                                                     W.B. Yeats

Achieving inner-peace amidst the fire-fighting.....

My dear NAM
As one of the long term special people in my little circle, I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me today, and we all could probably use more calm in our lives.

Some doctor on TV this morning said the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started.

So I looked around my house to see things I'd started and hadn't finished and, before leaving for work this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, a pockage of Prungles, tha mainder of bot Prozic and Valiuminun scriptins, the res of the chesescke an a box a chocletz.

Yu haf no idr how bludy fablus I feel rite now.

Plaese sned dhis orn to dem yu fee ar in ned ov iennr pisss. An telum, u fukin luvum.!!

Yours fondly

Brian

PS Now ready to mobilise your well-being?

Virtually 54% of shoppers leave a trolley-load of shopping in the aisle and start again next door…

In the real world, supermarket heads would roll, but in mobile shopping, 54% of consumers leave the mobile site when they run into difficulty and over a quarter (28%) turn to a competitor, causing us to blame the shopper..

In the current flat-line climate, the major mobile achievement of attracting new users, drawing them down each aisle, persuading them to select from appropriate categories, despite a multitude of price-compare opportunities, filling expandable trolleys that are limited only by size of wallet (most times!) with zero-opportunities for pilferage, no distractions in terms of empty/crowded aisles, only to abandon them at the checkout and offer their appetite to a 1-click competitor seems unwise..

A NAM at the sharp-end knows it is insane…


New research shows mobile is becoming the defacto browsing and buying method in the home and on the go. Almost two-thirds of smartphone and tablet users access websites on a daily basis and over a half shop via their mobile device at least once a week.

The survey of 1,000 UK smartphone and tablet owners shows the biggest bugbear for shoppers using mobile sites is speed, cited as a frustration by 49%. However there are many issues impacting the mobile experience unrelated to loading speeds. These include having to navigate both horizontally and vertically to view the page (48%), difficulty logging in (37%), and links that are too small (35%). One in five smartphone and tablet users said they can’t easily complete transactions on a mobile device.

New virtual demands in flatline markets
NAMs who bust a gut linking consumers and brands in the aisle know that today’s mobile-savvy consumer has become less forgiving and expects mobile sites and apps to offer all the functionality they are used to on a desktop. In fact, all stakeholders know that ‘mobile first’ is rapidly becoming the most sensible strategy for any e-commerce business that hopes to learn anything from bricks & mortar realities…. .

Have a virtually long weekend, from the NamNews Team!
(Link to free report here)

The talk-ratio in negotiation - optimising scarce time with the buyer

With extending lead-times to gain access to the buyer, and the need to survive over-riding everything, a NAM can be tempted to jeopardise the outcome of a precious buyer-meeting by attempting to monopolise the conversation via a high-intensity monologue, eventually expressing 'hurt' at the buyer's unimaginative  demands for 'the margin'.

This basic mishandling of the session can be avoided by reverting to appropriate use of the 'talk-ratio' at different stages of the meeting. Essentially, relative interventions by seller and buyer should comply with the 30/70, 50/50, 70/30 rule as the meeting progresses through the different phases of beginning, middle and end..

The Beginning: NAM: 30%, Buyer 70%
Having resisted the temptation to unfurl the 200-slide 'presentation', NAMs may realise how little they know about the buyer, and lapse into interrogation-mode. However, time with the buyer is too precious to risk asking for basic facts that should have been researched elsewhere. NAMs should instead focus their 30% of the dialogue on fact-checking and opinion-checking using a mix of open and leading questions, seeking buying signals, and listening to and using the answers...

The Middle: NAM: 50%, Buyer 50%
Phase two should be a shared discussion of the issues, neutralising the objections ('if he ain't objecting, he ain't in the market...') and helping the buyer to buy, using a subtle combination of finance-based adding of value and devaluing of concessions, and testing possible 'need and solution' combinations. In other words, demonstrating a willingness to slice the cake to fit, and enlarging the size of cake only if justified by a willingness to buy more...
Good buyers love this bit...

The End: NAM: 70%, Buyer 30%
If the groundwork has been adequate, then the switch to 70/30 should be natural, and mutually beneficial, as the NAM is allowed to 'take over' the conversation and detail the solution, based upon facts established and agreed in earlier phases, with both parties confident that follow-through will meet, or even exceed expectations...

Time to ignore the flames and try a change of fuel?

Founder of Wikipedia says boring university lectures 'are doomed'

The boring university lecture is going to be the first major casualty of the rise in online learning in higher education, says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in a new BBC article.

The custodian of the world's biggest online encyclopaedia says that unless universities respond to the rising tide of online courses, new major players will emerge to displace them, in the way that Microsoft arrived from nowhere alongside the personal computer.

This highlights the importance of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have signed up millions of students, using video-lectures supplemented with interactive information, that can be used at any time on a tablet or laptop.

Wales also suggests the future model of higher education will be to allow students to use recordings of lectures - and to use the teaching time to discuss and develop what students have been watching, .

The Khan Academy
This change in the role of the ‘classroom’ echoes the approach of Sal Khan who set up the Khan Academy, a rich and fascinating online source of over 3,000 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and hundreds of skills to practice, all free of charge.

Khan suggests that ‘homework’ should consist of viewing/studying relevant videos, and ‘classroom’ sessions be devoted to practical application and problem solving issues arising from the homework…

Application to NAMs
This is equivalent to pre-workshop distribution of material so that NAMs come to a bespoke workshop ready to apply the process to their categories, customers, competitors and live trade issues, using real ammunition...

(NamNews are currently using this approach to help clients develop and implement finance-based trade strategies, email: bmoore@namnews.com  for details)