Ben Ball

Retail Customer Experience: Retailers, take back your shelves

March 5, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
Over the past generation, stores lost their individuality, becoming homogenous and undifferentiated. A major factor in this lack of personality came when stores began selling space for advertising. To what degree is co-op advertising responsible for any sameness seen across supermarkets?      [more...]

Any major retailer who allowed co-op advertising to reduce differentiation in their stores was asleep at the switch. Vendor marketing departments have struggled for years with the demand for differentiation -- at least from top accounts. Whether it be as simple as staggered timing or, more often, some nod toward customization of the event to the retailer.

Granted, there are some in-store vehicles (shelf coupon dispensers for example) where manufacturers buy a "run of press" and retailers get whatever is in the program. And smaller independent retailers face the challenge of being too small to command customization. But the big guys don't have to accept it these days.