Winning over retailers, coming top of your category and attracting shoppers
It’s the holy trinity. Retailers need to attract more shoppers, encourage them to spend more and, crucially, to hold on to them. Shopper numbers and trips are driven by the attractiveness of the categories on offer within any given store. Typically, the fastest growing retailers are those that have the highest number of categories in growth. To take a pre-COVID-19 example, Lidl increased its market share by 0.6 percentage points in the 12 weeks to 23 February 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, while Tesco conceded 0.5. One of the key differences between the two was that 176 categories were in growth in Lidl, versus just 85 in Tesco. While the pandemic may have disrupted business as usual, it’s likely these more normal indicators of positive retailer performance will return.
So how can category success be unlocked? Well, it depends – for newer product lines, the key to driving sales is to attract more shoppers. But if the category is already a staple of British grocery trollies, the source of growth shifts to persuading consumers to spend more each time they buy. This is illustrated by the recent growth in the canned cola market. As we have all spent more time at home this year, our willingness to buy larger packs saw the average spend per trip on canned colas jump 14% from £4.65 to £5.29. Brands need to show retailers that they understand the likely growth drivers for their category, demonstrating in turn how they will help to push up overall supermarket sales.
