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Using seasonal data

Sir, With Valentine’s fast approaching and a mixed bag of Christmas results for the grocery sector, perhaps retailers should reconsider their approach to seasonal events. While they form a critical part of the marketing calendar, the focus should lie on unlocking the wider potential around the events rather than the events themselves.

There is more to seasonal marketing than selling chocolates and cards on Valentine’s Day and data has a starring role to play. Grocers can make key calendar events work harder by using PoS data to provide customised offers before, during and after the event, extending the customer journey.

Michael Poyser, chief analytics officer, Ecrebo



Finding the good news

Sir, Traditionally, the British grocery industry likes to communicate on two topics: short term and bad news. At Kantar, we aim to break this habit with data that tells the whole story. We looked at the period between Black Friday and Boxing Day, asking: what were the longer-term trends in retail?

In the past three years, 13 grocers were analysed. From those, five companies were ‘superperformers’ and additional three are ‘outperformers’. Who are they? Our superperformers were Aldi, Amazon, Fortnum & Mason, Lidl and Hotel Chocolat. Outperformers were B&M, Booker (Tesco) and Naked Wines.

So, what’s the good news in grocery? Eight of 13 grocers are consistently performing well during the festive period. As Britain’s economy enters 2020, all retailers will be hoping for faster growth in both sales and investment.

Ray Gaul, SVP retail insights, Kantar



Nielsen Brandbank

Sir, Today, consumers want more information available to them at the touch of a button, but unfortunately it is not as simple as that. However, this is all about to change, as Nielsen Brandbank, the world’s largest provider of digital product content has formed a global strategic alliance with industry-leading rich content experts, SKU Ninja & WhyteSpyder to extend the Nielsen Brandbank Connect offering.

The solution will enable the industry to combine best-in-class product content with rich media to improve consumer engagement.

Richard Friend, head of product management and marketing, Nielsen Brandbank

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