How entry level merchandisers grow top fmcg brands,newbies guide

March 7, 2023 Team DigitalGumma 0 Comments Brand positioning, Brands identity, Fmcg Merchandising, Fmcg Retail, merchandiser, Planogram, Product merchandising, Promotional Merchandise, Retail Product visibility, VISUAL MERCHANDISING IN GROCERY STORES

Fmcg Sales and Merchandise: How Are They Related?

The way you set up your merchandise can be the difference between high sales and low sales.

Maximizing Product sales potential.

Fmcg Consumer Offtake depends on stock availability

You never get a second chance to make the first impression

Its true for any shopper who visits your store. Product merchandising is a critical way to improve the customer experience and maximize sales. Most studies have shown that 83% of human process in purchasing comes from the sense of sight.

Retailers sometimes miss the opportunity when it comes to effective and engaging product displays to entice their shoppers. But this can be overcome with the help of planogram software. Planograms are visual merchandising tools, that help retailers plan, design, and display their products on shelves to attract customers and have an enjoyable shopping experience revisiting your store again. This will allow you to offer the right products to the right customers and drive profits. So, here are some planogram product merchandising displays ideas to try in your store.

First product display seen is outside your store.

It is very important to pay attention to the exterior of your store, especially with the window displays. Although most of the merchandising is done inside the store, the first impression starts from the outside of your store. That is why you need to create an enticing window display with your best-selling items, keeping in mind market demand, and consumer preferences, and seasonal. If it does not look welcoming from the outside, people will surely walk away. If you have a clothing store, displaying a dress along with matching accessories can make it look really enticing.

Sensitize the mind body and senses.

Most people prefer to shop in stores because they want to see or feel the items personal. Since they cannot touch the item in an online website shopping cart, this is one advantage for brick-and-mortar retailers to utilize. Give shoppers the chance to touch, smell, and try out samples. If your products are displayed in boxes, place at least a few of them openly displayed on shelves, so people can see and use them. You can sense the aroma of cocoa when you enter a chocolate store. This will uptick interest among shoppers in buying chocolates and boost sales.

Have something seasonal+cross-merchandise products.

Timely displays can grab the attention of shoppers. For example, most stores will display school supplies and relevant merchandise on an entire shelf during the back-to-school season to target parents and students. Cross-merchandising complementary items like notebooks, pencil boxes, and backpacks is another great way to boost sales. Retailers can also display products as a bundle, which includes a set of pens, pencils, and erasers for impulse purchases.

Maintain store fixtures,overall store ambience.

appearance: Retailers can customize their store shelves to introduce and promote new products by displaying them effectively. By analyzing consumer behavior and market trends with planogram reports, it can help retailers in designing store layouts to aesthetically please shoppers and improve retail profitability.

With retail being more competitive than ever, retailers need to merchandise their product displays to entice shoppers with planograms. This helps shoppers choose the right products for them and results in boosting sales.

If you work in a retail store?

You’ll encounter several industry terms worth memorizing. Two of the most common retail terms you’ll hear in your work are sales and merchandising. Understanding how these two concepts interact and differ can help you perform your job more effectively.

What is merchandising?

Merchandising is the process and manner in which sales employees display products for consumer consideration. The goal of merchandising is to create an appealing visual display that will entice shoppers to make a product purchase. Other elements of merchandising include ensuring shoppers have the appropriate pricing and product information to make an informed purchasing decision and creating the best possible mix or range of products in the store to entice customers to buy.

What is sales?

Sales is the act of a customer making a product purchase. The full sales process usually entails the customer considering a product or products, asking any questions they might have to a sales associate, selecting a product for purchase and paying for the item at a cash register. Once the customer has paid for their product, the sale is complete.

Merchandising vs Sales

Merchandising and sales, while different processes, are directly related. Retail stores use merchandising as a tactic to increase sales in their location. In many businesses, the same employees perform both merchandising and sales. Each requires its own set of skills and responsibilities:

Merchandising

Many retail employees perform merchandising in the course of their work. Merchandising requires the following skills and attributes:

Visual awareness.

Visual and spatial awareness are key skills for creating effective merchandising displays. Retail employees must use these skills to create appealing product displays that result in sales.

Consumer understanding.

Retail employees who work on merchandising should have an understanding of what appeals to their target customer base. All merchandising efforts should align with this demographic’s desires and needs.

Trend knowledge.

Regularly adjusting and changing merchandising displays can help entice returning customers to make new purchases. Knowing what’s trendy or in the current Zeitgeist can help retail employees create effective merchandising displays.

Sales

Sales require a different set of skills and abilities than merchandising. While some customers arrive at a purchasing decision on their own, others benefit from input from a retail employee trained in effective sales strategies. Common sales skills and attributes include:

Communication.

Communication is one of the most vital skills for a retail employee working on a sale. You should be able to build a positive relationship with the customer quickly and effectively to share important product information.

Product knowledge.

Retail employees assisting with a sale should know basic product information like price, features and effectiveness to help customers make informed purchasing decisions.

Customer awareness.

The best retail salespeople know when potential customers are enjoying interacting with the sales staff and when they’d prefer to be left alone to make their own decisions.

Benefits of merchandising

Merchandising provides several benefits to stores that use this strategy effectively. A few of the most common and most desirable advantages of merchandising include:

Increased profits.

Merchandising helps showcase specific products, enticing customers to make purchases. This leads to higher overall store sales.

Happier customers.

Many customers enjoy well-designed merchandising displays, as the visual appeal adds to their shopping experience, leaving them happier and potentially more likely to make a purchase.

Engaged consumers.

Often, customers stay in stores with effective merchandising displays longer, which increases the likelihood they’ll purchase as they engage with the merchandising and associated products.

Higher inventory turnover.

As customers interact with your products and make more purchases, your overall inventory will turn over more quickly, allowing you to introduce newer, more updated products to your store.

Better brand Awareness and loyalty.

Merchandising is usually an effective tool for helping customers develop a relationship and loyalty to a specific brand or product.

Stronger brand recognition.

Effective merchandising displays help build brand recognition, which can lead to higher sales in the future.

Festival-Sales-and-fmcg-brands

Merchandising strategies

Use these merchandising strategies to help you make the most effective product displays and, ideally, increase your sales:

Interactive displays

Interactive merchandising involves using movement, sound, light and scent to attract customer attention. Often, the most effective interactive displays include one or two of these elements rather than all of them to keep the display attractive, digestible and relatively subtle as customers peruse the store.

Window displays

Window displays are an excellent merchandising strategy for stores with heavy foot traffic. If your retail location is in a mall or located on a downtown street with lots of passersby, consider creating a visually appealing window display to entice customers to visit your store.

Signs

Use signage to help customers learn more about the products in large merchandising displays or on the regular display shelves. Include useful information like the product’s price and any relevant promotional details. You can also add additional facts like which employees love which products, an interesting detail about the product or any other information that might entice a customer to engage with the item and hopefully make a purchase.

Themes

Consider tying several merchandising displays together with a theme for visual continuity and customer relevance. For example, if your store sells kids’ apparel, consider making a series of back-to-school displays in the summer and fall months with outfits and accessories for different school-related situations or events.

Demonstrations

Offer demonstrations or other hands-on events in your store during your busiest customer hours. This merchandising tactic helps consumers see exactly how they might use a product in their home and ask the demonstrator questions about the product.

Samples

Samples are a great merchandising strategy for encouraging customers to make a purchase. They work particularly well for grocery or other food stores and health or personal care products. Giving customers a chance to try a product for free increases the odds they’ll invest in that product if they enjoy their experience with it.

Eye-level placement

Be aware of which products you’re placing on the eye-level shelves. These are the products customers are most likely to see when browsing and not looking for a specific item, so ensure these shelves and areas are particularly visually appealing and include sufficient information for customers to make an informed purchasing decision.

Consistent stocking

Make sure you’re regularly restocking your shelves and displays for visual continuity and to ensure customers can easily collect the products they might want to purchase.

During busy store hours, make sure you or a colleague is regularly checking the display inventory and restocking as needed.
If you work in a retail store, you’ll encounter several industry terms worth memorizing. Two of the most common retail terms you’ll hear in your work are sales and merchandising. Understanding how these two concepts interact and differ can help you perform your job more effectively.

Visual Merchandising Rules To Follow in Retail Stores

Fmcg-Merchandise-in-asuper-market. — Visual Merchandising: Rules for Retail Stores

Understanding how to merchandise effectively is a challenge for most retailers. What seems simple to customers is not so simple for retailers, especially when you are the one who plans and executes each product on shelves, to look enticing.

Do you know how long it takes for a shopper to figure out if they want to make purchases or not?

Five minutes.

It takes the shopper that long to receive the first impression of your store to make decisions on shopping. To entice shoppers, you need to visually approach store shelves to the maximum with planogram software.

Planograms are visual merchandising tools that help retailers plan and execute product shelves effectively to boost retail sales. So, the following are some visual merchandising rules every retailer should follow in their stores to entice shoppers:

The golden triangle and right traffic rule:

The merchandising law of the ‘golden triangle’ indicates placing the most popular, best-selling, and enticing products in the farthest corner of your store. For example, most supermarkets always place consumer goods like eggs, bread, and butter towards the end of the store to force shoppers to walk through the whole store to get there. This increases the shopper’s chances of grabbing other items on the way. Likewise, checkout counters are considered the most profitable, hotspot areas of the store. Products like snacks, candies, toys, magazines, or gift cards can be placed to increase impulse buying.

Keep displays focused:

A strategic visual merchandising display is the one that focuses on one product or a group of similar products. Putting too many diverse items on the same product display can result in confusing the customer. For example, if you want to put the newest clothing on display to boost sales, consider also displaying matching accessories such as jewelry and footwear. This helps to improve the store’s performance and boost retail sales.

Change the displays monthly:

The one common mistake every retailer makes is leaving their displays for entire seasons or months. Even if a particular product display has performed well beyond the expectations of retailers, it will eventually fall off due to the lack of engagement among customers. Your customers will grow tired of seeing the same product displays every day and result in thinking that you have no recent products on store shelves. So, changing the displays at least monthly can entice your customers to visit your store and make purchases.

Group in threes: Retailers can prompt customers to purchase items by using the rule of three to maximize sales. Displaying three items that are symmetrical gives the shoppers a sense of balance, causing the item to stand out from others. For example, most stores use a larger item in the center of the store to draw attention. The rule of three also allows for comparison between products, as well as provide a way to display product groupings that can be purchased together. For instance, apparel stores display a variety of sizes of clothing to create awareness of the different size’s available in the store

Use color blocking:

Retailers can use enticing color blocking on the shelves to attract shoppers. It is proven method to create emotion and mood, both positive and negative for the customer. For example, most stores use warm and bright colors such as white, orange, yellow, and blue during summer to highlight their products and store layout. This will help improve your store’s performance and boost sales.

Therefore, retailers can successfully merchandise their product shelves with the help of visual merchandising. This allows shoppers to get the right products on store shelves and creates an enjoyable shopping experience.

What is merchandising and why should you care about it?

Merchandising encompasses the things your clients see when they enter your business. The promotional material, the items for sale, and the general theme of the space impact how your customer remembers their experience. In a restaurant setting, there tends to be limited merchandising space, so it’s even more important to get this right.

A restaurant has a shorter amount of time to make an impression than a retail store, so improving your merchandising plan can make a huge difference.

Merchandising your restaurant becomes incredibly important as you try to increase business and grow your customer loyalty. But how do you get started with merchandising your restaurant? There are two main categories you need to focus on: branding and placement.

BRANDING

The first thing that should be done when starting a restaurant is establishing the brand. Determining the brand will influence the rest of the merchandising efforts, so make sure to think about it thoroughly.

Consider how you want customers to think and feel about the brand.

The logo and restaurant design will influence how customers remember the establishment, so make sure that it is “on brand.” Whether the goal is to appear as a hip and trendy location, or as a classic, family-style restaurant, there should be a consistent theme that can be seen and felt throughout the business–from the decor, to the merchandise, and all the way down to the menus.

Create a brand guide that describes the company esthetic including color scheme, logos, and even inspiration photos to simplify later design or merchandising choices. It’s important for the merchandise to match the brand. Whether prospective customers see an advertisement on a website or someone wearing a branded t-shirt walking down the road, they should be able to understand the type of restaurant it is just by looking at it. Consistency is key when it comes to branding, focusing the company vision helps to guarantee that it comes across clearly.

Food Takeaway at Zanzibar-Island.-Tanzania.

Give the customers a full experience by activating all of their senses from the moment they walk in.

When meeting someone new, there is always an immediate first impression that influences future interactions. The same thing is true of restaurants. Customers will develop a first impression as soon as they walk in, so make sure they have all of the information they need to make a positive connection.

Take all five senses into account when designing the entry to the restaurant:

Have visually appealing decor that fits with the brand that draws their eyes up and around the restaurant.

The smell of the food will help entice customers and get them excited for their meals.

Play music that fits with the brand but make sure it’s not too overpowering.

Set merchandise up as soon as the customers enter, giving them something to touch and look through while they wait.

And finally, when possible, offer small samples of the food to get them interested, maybe even encouraging them to try something they wouldn’t have thought to order.

Create a unique and appealing display for merchandise.

Every restaurant is trying to gain more customers, and many use merchandising to try and do so.

But one way to stand out from the rest is by making the displays unique. Don’t use the same boring shelves everyone else uses; find something that matches the theme and build off of that.

For example: If it’s a coffee shop with an industrial theme to it, the displays can be made using pipes and metal; or maybe the restaurant is focused on an ecologically friendly approach, so displays can be made from upcycled furniture.

It doesn’t matter how awesome the merchandise is if no one is looking at it, so make sure there is something drawing attention to the product or decor to make the most of the opportunity. Lighting is a key element for this.

Always consider the brand when selecting product to sell at the restaurant.

Merchandising in a restaurant doesn’t always mean items like t-shirts or coffee cups, it can also include the foods offered on the menu. The way the menu is arranged can influence the choices the customers make. The menu should fit with the brand, just like everything else in the store.

For example: When setting up a fast-food restaurant it’s important to have the best value items listed clearly on large easy-to-read displays, but in a more traditional restaurant an on-brand physical menu that customers can look through is necessary.

When deciding on any kind of merchandise to sell, as always, keep the brand in mind. A burger restaurant doesn’t need to sell coffee mugs, but instead, they can sell the custom sauces they use on their burgers. A coffee shop, however, could sell travel mugs that act as a natural advertising opportunity.

Selling merchandise will likely never be the primary source of income for a restaurant, but it can encourage brand loyalty and awareness which is always beneficial in this competitive field. Once the branding is properly established, a restaurant can focus on the placement of the merchandise they sell.

PLACEMENT

Now that you have established your brand, you’re going to be able to develop the perfect merchandising plan based on a few factors.

Product placement at your site will depend on the items you’re selling.

Selling merchandise is all about getting more eyes on the product. It’s obviously impossible to sell things to people who haven’t seen the items, so it’s important to put the items for sale in locations that are guaranteed to have customer traffic.

It’s always a good tactic to place small and inexpensive items near the cash or hostess stand because people won’t think twice before adding it to their purchase. Newer or more expensive items are best placed close to the door, or close to where customers wait to be seated, so they see it as soon as they walk in and will be drawn to looking at the items while they wait to be served.

Study customer traffic flow to maximize sales.

It’s important to study your customers’ regular traffic patterns when deciding where to set up the merchandise. Customers tend to follow the same paths when navigating a restaurant, so by examining these patterns, the prime merchandise locations will become clear.

Keep items within reach of your clients so they can take a closer look.

People love to be able to pick things up and look at them closer before they decide to purchase it. Keep merchandise within reach of customers so it is clear what items are for sale. Giving them the opportunity to interact with the products encourages them to become attached to it and choose to buy it.

Don’t neglect the upkeep of the items.

After putting a significant amount of effort into branding and designing unique displays and selecting merchandise, it’s important to keep up with the displays. Don’t allow dust to collect on items, and make sure to refresh the layout and organization of the products regularly.

If everything is always in the same place, it may appear to regular customers that it’s the same product that isn’t selling. By refreshing the layout and keeping it tidy and dust-free, the customers feel as though the product they are purchasing is new.

Cross-merchandising popular items can help boost sales.

If there is a particular item that always sells really well, consider cross-promoting a less popular item alongside it. It helps to draw in a new group of clients who may have been unaware of the item before and may encourage them to try more new items as well.

Track how the placement impacts the bottom line.

There are always going to be some products that sell better than others. It’s important to keep detailed reports because it can help to determine not only which items are the best sellers, but also if the placement is affecting sales. Trying out different arrangements will help to identify prime locations that will be useful when launching new items.

As more firms are being established to fulfil consumer’s ever-changing preferences and wants, the retail environment can become competitive. Companies can establish a distinct and trustworthy operation that draws buyer’s attention to their items and build brand loyalty with a successful merchandising strategy. Retailers must consider the following tactics when deciding how to properly sell products and ensure that a company’s merchandise provides value to customers.