"Acting on Shopper Understanding as a Vital Ingredient for Retail Success"

emnos was honored to participate at CIES’ annual World Food Business Summit, which took place from June 17 to 19, 2009 in New York. The Summit brought together more than 650 CEOs and senior executives of the world’s leading food and consumer goods retailers and manufacturers from 40 countries for three days of intense discussion and interaction. From speed and agility to simplicity and focus, the summit tried to uncover the best strategies for navigating through turbulent times.

In a Special Session on 17 June 2009, emnos showed that acting on shopper understanding is a vital ingredient for retail success. Gerhard Hausruckinger, CEO of emnos, presented the first results of a recent research conducted by emnos which showed the impact of the recession on retail clients in four European markets. Emnos had analyzed the transaction data of more than 20 million shoppers in UK, France, Spain and Germany and identified some general trends in all markets: Shopper loyalty as well as shopper frequency are decreasing, while the share of own label products in the shopping basket is increasing. In Spain, which is most affected by the crisis, major changes in the shopping basket could be observed, e.g. budget customers switched to multi-pack products and bigger pack sizes and  added more own label products to their baskets.

How have different retailers coped with these challenges? Patrick Rouvillois, Chief Marketing Officer of emnos' client Carrefour, presented some examples on how a new discount range and optimisations in ranging and store layout based on customer insights helped to retain customers. Robert Diamond, Regional Managing Director UK & International of emnos, added further examples from the UK retail market. He showed e.g. how the emnos client Waitrose managed to retain and grow existing customers by elevating own label products to the status of a brand through targeted promotions and product development.

The emnos presentation was very well received by the audience at the World Food Business Summit which is reflected by the delegates’ positive evaluation: emnos scored over 4 out of 5, which according to the organisers is one of the highest scoring special sessions the Summit ever had. Retailers were the group who appreciated the presentation the most, they rated it at 4.6 points.

More information about the event: www.ciessummit.com