dhVoice: A Roundtable Discussion with dunnhumby Thought Leaders
3 November '22How should retailers weather inflationary times? To answer this, we’ve gathered a panel of experts at dunnhumby to break it down for us.
What should grocery retailers prioritize? What should they understand about the competition? How can grocers level the playing field by adopting the Customer data science that can support both short term and long term growth?
For this edition of The dunnhumby Quarterly, dunnhumby experts in Media, Shopper Research, Category Solutions, Pricing, Loyalty, Competitive Strategy, and Consumer Psychology gathered together to discuss practical recommendations, as well as short and long-term tactics that retailers can put in place right now to shield and strengthen their relationship with customers during this period. In short, our experts believe retailers need to:
- Focus your investments – Use customer knowledge to identify which categories and products are more relevant for each lever– base price, promotions, loyalty, and private brand– ensuring your investment in each lever is the most impactful to your price-sensitive customers.
- Optimize your actions – Discontinue products and promotions with low ROI, even if that means losing back margin. This will not only make your tactics more customer-centric, but it can also increase operative effectiveness by reducing implementation costs and freeing already strained labor resources.
- Find balance – Based on customer data, decide which products should rely more on base price, promotions or margin. Balance price and promotion efforts to maximize their effect on price perception and strengthen your value proposition for the short and long term.
- Dial up your loyalty program – Reinforce your loyalty program value and communicate its worth at a time when customers appreciate it most. Modify program tactics and mechanics during inflation to maximize customers’ immediate savings.
- Safeguard your private brand – Implement basic hygiene practices and assess your private brand architecture to effectively support each brand, building equity and maximizing volumes for each.
dhVoice is included as part of The dunnhumby Quarterly: Inflation Edition, a new strategic analysis of the key grocery themes in times of economic uncertainty. This edition unites inflation-related insights from economic trends, Customer needs, competitive positioning of the 70 largest retailers in the U.S. grocery market, and the perspectives of our battle tested grocery industry consultants.
