January 6, 2025
By Craig Rosenblum, Principal, Columbus Consulting
What 2024 has taught us and what grocers should be focused on in the New Year
2024 has certainly been an incredible year, and while many uncertainties remain, it has taught us several valuable lessons.
- Omni-channel Evolution: The retail landscape has transformed as eCommerce continues to see year-over-year growth, with Amazon and Walmart accelerating their dominance. Meanwhile, large-scale store closures, particularly in the Drug and Dollar sectors, continue to shape the retail store environment.
- Importance of Physical Stores: Despite the rise of eCommerce, physical stores remain crucial, with over 90% of sales still occurring in-store.
- Retail Media Networks: These networks are losing momentum as the anticipated monetization has not materialized, posing challenges for regional and independent retailers. The new focus is on in-store media to personalize the in-store experience.
- Value of 1st Party Data: Retailers’ first-party data is a precious asset, essential for loyalty, personalization, and targeting strategies.
- Artificial Intelligence: AI is still in its early stages and is often misunderstood. It is not going to replace employees but will enhance shopper personalization and overall organizational efficiency.
- Modernizing Personnel and Structure: Updating personnel, organizational structure, and capabilities will require comprehensive training across the organization and the infusion of fresh talent.
- IT Resources and Priorities: The demand for IT resources and expertise continues to grow, presenting ongoing challenges.
As we enter the New Year with new leadership, political and interest rate uncertainties, ongoing inflation concerns, the Kroger and Albertsons merger no longer happening, and competition everywhere, retailers should focus on going “Back to the Basics!”
- Clarify Your Shopper Value Equation: Identify one or two key differentiating factors versus your competition and ensure you are at parity everywhere else. Remember, you can’t be all things to all people.
- Update Category Strategies and Roles: Many have not done this since before COVID, and they are outdated.
- Maximize Price and Promotion Effectiveness: Whether you have rule-based or optimization technology, it starts with identifying your key competitor(s) and utilizing your Category Roles to drive your KPIs (e.g., if a Destination category, focus on investing margin to drive units).
- Improve Your In-Store Shopping Experience: Provide shoppers with a connected and personalized experience from mobile apps to shelf tags, store locators, ways to save (apps, kiosks, in-lane), new product awareness, and enhancing communication to get credit for all you do.
- Enhance Your Data and Technology: Ensure you do not fall behind. This starts with a clear IT roadmap to identify innovation, priorities, and ROI. Master Data Management and having a defined Product Item Master and Customer Relationship database, governance, and infrastructure will be essential to drive organizational efficiency and personalization.
Regardless of industry changes and economic conditions, grocers should remain focused on controllables. Driving profits through efficiency is the place to start. Identifying what is working, creating clarity and always keeping the customer at the center of your brand are the cornerstones of navigating the new year successfully.
For more insights on the grocery industry, emerging technologies and other insights, visit https://www.columbusconsulting.com/the-tech-scan/
ABOUT CRAIG ROSENBLUM
Craig is a Principal and Consultant executive with over 30 years of cross-functional experience in retail, wholesale and consumer goods. As an industry executive with expertise in Grocery Retail, he has developed and deployed go-to-market sales, product, and technology strategies across merchandising, supply chain, operations, finance and MarTech to drive top and bottom line financial performance across 200+ Retailers and Wholesalers
ABOUT COLUMBUS CONSULTING
Columbus Consulting delivers solutions that drive true value and have been transforming the retail, grocery and CPG industries for over two decades. We are a retail consulting company of industry experts. Our approach is simple, if you do it, we do it. We are more than consultants; we are experienced practitioners who actually sat in our clients’ seats. We understand the challenges, know what questions to ask and deliver the right solutions. Columbus offers a unique, consumer-centric approach with an end-to-end perspective that bridges functional & organization silos from strategy to execution. Our specialties include: unified commerce, merchandising & category management, planning & inventory management, sourcing & supply chain, data & analytics, accounting, finance & operations, people & organization and information technology. Let us know how we can help you. To learn more, visit COLUMBUSCONSULTING.COM.
