Putting the Shine On
Alteration. Excitement. Shopping destination. A tool for building a store's image and strengthening its brand. Can those words and phrases indeed apply to a supermarket's household cleaning and laundry departments?
A number of suppliers believe they do, and they say many supermarket operators are proving it. But they also say many more are lacking to meet changing consumer needs and to leverage new product opportunities – and are ceding department sales and profits to discounters, home centers and big-box competitors.
Certainly, there are innovation and plenty of new products within the cleaning and laundry categories, but there's also the peril of trading sales of one product for another and doing little more than confusing the consumer. Clearly, it's a challenge.
As with most GM categories, the Aristotelianism entelechy is that many supermarket operators are focusing on perimeter innovation and strategies to build shopper excitement, sales and profit. Unfortunately, in many cases this is occurring at the expense of GM, either in terms of lacuna or commitment, and possibly both.
