Follow-Ups: Shopper Marketing, Price Wars

The GMA, Booz & Co. and SheSpeaks released a study on shopper marketing, a frequent topic here, making the point that shopper marketing is being siloed, rather than integrated into comprehensive marketing programs:

Overall investment in shopper marketing -- defined by the Marketing Leadership Council as in-store advertising, promotion and design initiatives intended to extend brand equity and provide the retailer with differentiation -- is estimated to be growing at 21% annually, according to hardknoxlife.com.

However, this new study concludes that CPG manufacturers have yet to align shopper marketing initiatives with the advertising and promotions that reach consumers at home and on the go. That results in disconnected marketing messages, wasted spending and missed opportunities to drive purchases.

Coincidentally, another article published the same day offered an example of one company that is beginning to integrate – Del Monte named agencies to take responsibility for both consumer promotions and shopper marketing for two of its divisions:

The move is part of the company’s efforts to better streamline marketing resources and “produce best-in-class marketing programs that deliver on the company’s accelerated growth plan,” per Del Monte.

The New Yorker takes a look at price wars, using Amazon/Wal-Mart as an example, and opines that often, “price wars are like games of chicken, and typically end just as badly.” The magazine, though, concludes that this case is not a bad move for the two primary participants, but that (agreeing with our readers’ opinions in our poll) it will be tough on everybody else:

Outraged book publishers and booksellers are making exaggerated claims about how the discounts will devalue books and wreck the industry. But they’re right about one thing. The real competition in this price war is not between Wal-Mart and Amazon but between those behemoths and everyone else—and the damage everyone else is incurring is deliberate, not collateral. Wal-Mart and Amazon have figured out how to fight a price war and win: make sure someone else takes the blows.