Insights In Retail — Insights into Retail Planning, Space Optimization and Virtual Consumer Research

Virtual Shelf - Advances Visual Merchandising?

by Michael Letchford on October 26, 2009

Visual Merchandisers Need New Planogramming Software

This past two years we’ve seen traditional planogramming systems come under heavy scrutiny. These older systems were originally marketed, in the main, by data companies. This background, coupled with pressure from particularly influential clients, led to applications which were primarily optimised for analytics and overburdened with extensive but little used functionality. The net effect was software which was hard to learn and difficult to use. Today, clients have new requirements, which these older systems have difficulty in fulfilling.

In our detailed surveys of both manufacturers and retailers, it emerged that they want a new generation of merchandising tools. In general, both want easier to use systems that can be used by a wider range of staff, with minimal training. There is greater interest in high quality visual presentation of a broader range of merchandising styles, for a broader group of products. The ability to more realistically illustrate a display complete with point of sale signage, shelf edge labels, header boards etc is now far more important than a few years ago.

Manufacturers and retailers want a merchandising system that will not only co-exist and interoperate with their traditional legacy systems but at the same time open up new possibilities in merchandise planning and in the operational deployment of merchandising initiatives.

Virtual Shelf - Meeting Today’s Visual Merchandising Needs?

Recognizing this, Fifth Dimension has put a great deal of research and development effort into meeting today’s requirements with a new generation of visual merchandising application called Virtual Shelf. This work has culminated in the latest release (version 4.5) which contains many innovations designed to meet these needs and deliver, among other advantages;

faster creation of new and revised planograms
enhanced photo-realistic rendering of merchandise displays
revolutionary drag ‘n drop charting and reporting for easy analysis
advanced planogram and sku level performance analysis
‘realogram’ creation facilities for rapid in-store capture of displays
advanced planogram visual comparison capabilities
automatic fixture, range and display compliance analysis
automatic calculation of in-store labour costing for new planograms
rapid publishing of planograms in in-store briefing pack layouts
improved speed, for greater productivity

This new version has been enthusiastically received by both retailers and manufacturers and, in collaborating with them so closely, we have together developed several excellent ideas to work on for the next release. This is our preferred way to work with committed clients. It helps us stay on track to deliver what they need today and what they will need in the near future.

The image above shows Virtual Shelf’s photorealistic display capabilities rendering a Carlsberg Beer Planogram. Click on the image to see a larger rendering.

Virtual Shelf is just one application in Fifth Dimension’s extensive portfolio of Store, Aisle and Shelf Display planning and performance optimisation software. For more information, contact Fifth Dimension at +44 (0)1908 327650 or visit our new web site.

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Marks and Spencer Goes Mobile

by Michael Letchford on August 24, 2009

marks-and-spencer-goes-mobile-200 Last week saw the expansion of Marks and Spencer’s Mobile ‘Food To Go’ service in Milton Keynes. This builds, no doubt, on M&S’s expansion into Simply Food outlets at various locations such as petrol stations and motorway service stations and the ‘order in advance’ LunchToGo services via their micro web site.

This move is all the more interesting when you recall the closure of a number of Simply Food stores earlier this year. It seems that the ‘new’ service has been run in pilot mode for some time in Milton Keynes and in Swindon, with two mobile units in each town. According to our local man there are to be two more units regularly servicing MK offices and another sixty across the country by the end of this year.

marks-and-spencer-goes-mobile
I’m not sure what the local sandwich shops and existing mobile vendors will be able to do to respond to this move, but what a great idea! It brings the all the convenience and quality of their packaged foods right to the doorstep of your offices, and in Milton Keynes’ outlying office developments, as in many cities, that’s a great timesaver as well as a way to buy quality lunch items rather than poor food value snacks.

Our two M&S associates say that the service has been an ‘instant’ hit. The most popular purchase being fruit. They also carry more exotic items such as sushi, which is also very popular. As you can see from the image below there is a wide choice available.

It made us think about the Category Management meetings that must have gone on deep inside the M&S offices, working out the strategy, tactics, goals, assortment, display planning and logisitcs behind such an apparently simple proposition. I’ll bet it was huge fun though. No doubt, time will tell if they have it right. You’ll notice that the assortment includes sandiwches of all sorts (upper left), various soft drinks, water and smoothies (lower left), the centre display houses wraps and more sandwiches, sushi and various salad choices and on the right are a wide rage of crisps and biscuits. It must have been a nightmare arguing that one out! One thing should be obvious though - all the product is M&S Own Label. Just what you’d want, I guess.

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Wilkinson’s Animated Store Briefing Packs

Retail Communications

Earlier this year Wilkinson commissioned Fifth Dimension to help them with the launch of their new Home Living range, which they had re-branded with a more modern design. To implement the new range they had also developed new display equipment that included a bed, curtain displays, carpet plinths etc., all of which would be new to the store staff.

To ensure a successful roll-out to the stores, Wilkinson asked Fifth Dimension to create highly visual Store Briefing Packs to show the store staff how to implement the new range most effectively. The goal was to achieve the highest standards of compliance with the guidelines and so create the best possible presentation of the new range, consistently, in all stores.

We first created a Virtual Store from which we then created detailed animations showing how to implement the new equipment, how to “dress” the product on each type of fixture and how to maintain the display each day. [... ]

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New Future for In-Store Marketing’s $500Bn Spend?

In-Store Marketing

Trade Promotion - the King is dead; long live the King!?
Or so some would have you believe.
Trade Promotion or In-Store Marketing - The King of Prising Open the Retailers’ Iron Grip on Shelf Space - is perhaps still well and truly alive and kickin’; even in the depths of the deepest recession we’ve seen in decades. But, what if Joe Mandese’s prediction had been right in his article ‘Fast Forward: Is Mass Marketing History About To Repeat Itself?’, just over two years and a bold, ‘booming’ economy ago? Who knows what would be happening now in trade spending?
Joe had a [...]

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The Use of Virtual Store Simulations in Marketing Research and Beyond

Virtual Stores

The In-Store Marketing Institute recently published a comprehensive White Paper on Virtual Store simulation in marketing research. Thorough, but necessarily brief, it left out important examples of the earliest research and commercial work in this field. We summarise the White Paper’s introduction.

Then, in an attempt to fill in the gaps about the beginnings of Virtual Store based shopper behavior studies, we review Morton Heilig’s fantastic 1957 Sensorama machine, Ivan Sutherland’s ‘Ultimate Display’ and the first laboratory based ‘Virtual Shopping Simulation’, by Burke in 1992.

Finally, we look at the late 1990’s commercial research work done for PepsiCo and Procter and Gamble by Fifth Dimension, a pioneer in simulation since 1995. [...]

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The Perfect Store? - Co-op and Unilever use Virtual Stores to Design the ‘Perfect’ Neighbourhood Store

Shopper Marketing

Through 2003 to 2005 Unilever and United Co-op Stores collaborated on designing, testing and implementing a ‘Perfect Store’ layout. Research was commissioned in response to a realization that important Shopper Missions were poorly supported by the layout of typical convenience stores.

We look at Unilever’s’ initial findings and the Virtual Store tests we conducted to understand local shoppers’ reactions to the layout changes. We discuss the insights gained, the new store layout principles developed for refurbishing the format and their subsequent implementation in the pilot store .

The pilot validated the research and proved that, after an initial sales surge, average weekly sales stabilized 8.9% up overall; average spend per customer rose by 9% and the pilot store’s gross profits increased by 9.7%. These improvements were then rolled out to more convenience stores in the Co-op portfolio with similar success. [...]

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Do Virtual Stores Validate vs Real Store Tests?

Virtual Stores

Shopping in computer simulated Virtual Stores, as a means of researching shopper behavior, is exciting a great deal of press coverage. It’s not that the technique is new, more that it’s particularly topical, given the dynamics in today’s stores.

Both Retailers and ‘Big Brand’ Manufacturers need to offer the best choice of product at the right price to an ever changing customer base - particularly difficult in today’s spatially challenged retail stores and tight profit margin constraints.

Recognizing these challenges means there will always be keen interest in better, cheaper, faster ways of understanding the most cost-effective and profitable way to innovate product assortment and implement visual merchandising changes in-store.

But can Virtual Stores accurately test Shopper Behavior? Good Question. [...]

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Virtual Shelf - Next Generation Visual Merchandising?

Visual Merchandising

Procter and Gamble asked us to create a new kind of Visual Merchandising tool. Codenamed ‘Mary Shelf’, the first of a new generation of Visual Merchandising software was designed and delivered by one of our top Rapid Application Development teams in May 2003, after a very challenging five month development and QA effort. At the time, P and G owned global software licenses for all the first generation shelf planning planogram tools i.e. InterCept, ProSpace, Apollo, Spaceman etc., so it seemed strange to us that they would want to build another one.

They felt that the previous generation of software had not kept pace with the more sophisticated needs of today’s visual merchandisers and that it was not capable of realistically representing new merchandising concepts, point-of-sale graphics, shelf edge labels, innovative header boards etc at the highest level of photo-realism they thought was possible. So they hired us to build it for them. [...]

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The Pepsi Challenge - Could They Use ‘Virtual Store’ Simulations to Predict Shopper Behaviour?

Consumer Research

Shoppers often react unpredictably when faced with new ideas and we wanted to use our expertise to build Virtual Stores to explore that behaviour - under more closely controlled conditions than those in a real store. Creating realistic, fully interactive retail environments for testing shoppers’ reactions was, though, still in its infancy in the late 1990s. So, despite our proven track record, we were still something of an unknown quantity to PepsiCo when we met in 1999 to take up their challenge.

Over the next three years we broke new ground in our collaboration with them. We pioneered an innovative Virtual Store application called ‘Discovery’, which PepsiCo successfully used to test radically new retail concepts for Drive-Through Fast Food Outlets, Convenience Stores and full sized Grocery Stores, further enhancing their reputation as thought leaders in the process. [...]

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Pioneering Virtual Stores with Procter and Gamble

Virtual Stores

Procter and Gamble is one of the most innovative companies in the retail world and often the first to pioneer emerging technologies. We first worked with them in 1999 on a ‘proof of concept’ project which allowed them to research shoppers’ reactions to a new Mall Kiosk concept they had developed.

After that success, they commissioned us to develop an experimental ‘Virtual Store’, called ‘Spa Lore’, which was our first real opportunity to design a commercial application, purpose-built for the in-depth study of Shopper Behavior.

P&G wanted to research consumers’ potential interest in a new range of personal products. Traditional grocery outlets were rejected as inappropriate hosts for this project. Instead, they preferred the idea of an in-mall specialist store. They wanted to create a unique shopping experience; one which would educate consumers as well as offer them a relaxed atmosphere in which to explore, seek advice on and purchase the products, as part of a holistic personal ‘treatment’. [...]

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Eye Tracking in Shopper Insights - How Does it Work?

BioMetrics in Research

Today’s Eye Tracking systems measure what’s called the ‘Point-of-Regard’ by a technique called the ‘Pupil Center, Corneal Reflection’ method. The equipment consists of a matrix of LEDs emitting non-dazzling infra-red light, which is directed into the subject’s eyes. The light enters the retina and is reflected back as a bright disc.

These reflections are detected by an infra-red camera and the data processed by software, which, once calibrated with registration points, resolves the information into specific x and y coordinates that record the position of the subject’s gaze. It does this by identifying the centre of the pupil and the position of the corneal reflection in the field of view and then, using trigonometry, it’s able to calculate a precise point-of-regard position.

The data acquired during an extended eye tracking session can, for example, be overlaid on the original visual stimulus so that insights can be gained from the subject’s interaction with the material. [...]

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