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Suppose a retailer runs a one-week special on a single brand of liquid laundry detergent. After a week, the retailer knows just how much more of the product sold than at the usual price. Yet, that's hardly the whole picture.
Does the sale price generate true incremental gains? Does the detergent category gain new customers, new sales and profits or are sales simply moved from one detergent to another? And does the sale price in any way affect the store's entire sales and profit picture?
Inquiring minds, like Frank Bryja, want to know.
Bryja, vice president of merchandising for Marsh Supermarkets of Indianapolis, says the answers are finally becoming clear. And they're becoming clear for entire categories and even the entire store. "For the first time we are getting an opportunity to manage the entire store, which enables us to say where the business is going. I can take control of my destiny.
"Instead of listening to what every manufacturer says to me about their brands, I will have a way of saying 'this is what I want to do.' Then I can work together with the manufacturer."
The tool empowering Bryja to make that broad statement is the Marsh Super Study, an exhaustive undertaking involvng sales movement data for every item, including perishables, in five Marsh stores over a 15-month period.
"The Marsh Super Study offers us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look deeply into our business--more than we ever could in the normal course of events," says Donald Marsh, chairman and chief executive officer of the Marsh company. Marsh operates 80 supermarkets, 172 convenience stores and a wholesale division for convenience stores. Total company sales, top $1 billion a year.
Marsh says the study will enable his company and the entire industry to learn more about a wide range of factors, including:
* A first-ever comprehensive look at profitability and the real effect of promotions in perishables departments.
* Consumer behavior: what shoppers buy, when they shop, how they behave on different shopping trips and how they shop on different days of the week.
* How merchandising can change, even on different days, to meet consumer needs and maximize sales and profit potential, thanks to comprehensive data on all merchandising activity in the store.