Retail

Retailers, pharmacy chains and wholesalers across the world trust Simon-Kucher to help them markedly increase revenue, margins and profits.

It is no secret that any retail environment is a very complex interplay among consumers, competitors and suppliers. With an increasing amount of choices, consumers have become fickle; their behavior, ever changing, is now looking for that new best way of shopping; or, in other cases, the next best promotion. New retail formats are competing for attention, online shopping and mobile devices are increasing retail price transparency, and consumers are buying more and more on promotion sales. Extreme cost fluctuations that strain partnerships between retailers and manufacturers add onto today’s retail paradigm.

The result: retailers realizing that traditional retail strategies for managing consumers, pricing, and assortment need to be re-invented. Strategies that work now are strategies that stem from consumer behavior, needs, and expectations.

We combine industry expertise, proven analytical methods and tools, and global experience to deliver just that: customized solutions that focus on the consumer. Our teams work closely with our client teams to build capabilities and processes that ensure that solutions stick.

Our projects for retailing clients include:

• Strategic pricing transformations: Trigger “culture change” in our clients and follow a structured plan to build capabilities and processes to achieve state of the art pricing.
• Pricing strategies: Meet specific corporate goals such as increasing profit without sacrificing revenue.
• Promotion strategies: Maximize marketing spend and outline the right promotion for the right consumer.
• Mark-down management processes: Extract the most from excess inventories and returns.
• Pricing software vendor selection: Take an unbiased view at retail software solutions considering both opportunities and client resource constraints.
• Category pricing architectures: Enable corporate strategy and take consumer value, competitive situation, and cost volatility into account.
• Assortment strategies: Trigger growth and take into account opportunities within innovation, “own brands”, consumer needs and market white spaces.
• Retail brand management: Address the gaps to achieve growth and correct for undesirable brand image.
• Marketing efficiency improvement plans: Allocate budgets to marketing activities with the highest impact.
• Customer relationship management: Improve consumer loyalty through loyalty programs and targeted initiatives.