Shopper Marketing: how important is Secondary Locations ?

Hi FMCGers,

How important is having secondary location (product placement out of home shelf) ? and how can the brand benefit the most from it ?? 2 questions that a lot of FMCGers are trying to answer ? I will try to make it as simple as possible by highlighting the positives, negatives and the watch-outs:

The Positives:

1. It is add extra visibility in-store & increase off-take opportunities (every shopper marketeer dream)
2. it is easier to put extra communication (POSM) as it has more flexibility than the home shelf.
3. It has only one brand instead of multiple brands so the shopper will have less options to pick from, on the home shelf all the brands will be there and it will create a lot of confusion. 
4. It puts more qty in-store; means extra sales-in and if done right defiantly more sell-out.
5. It create more brand awareness by having different communication point across the stores.
6. Increase the probability of shopper purchasing the product; meaning a shopper may not visit the product home shelf if he/she doesn't need it, but if the secondary location was well put in one of the store's high traffic area then the shopper will definitely notice. (you can check type of shoppers blog: Part I / Part II )

The negatives:

1. It is more costly than the home shelf.
2. it needs more operational management in-store by the merchandising team. (most frequent issue)
3. It is mostly periodical not on-going.

The watch-outs:

1. The location, FMCGers needs to make the best possible secondary location for the product. The best location may very from product to another, for example the best location can be the area with highest traffic in-store, or the best location might be next to a certain section, for example cheese display next to the bread section. 
2. The medium for the secondary location: the FMCGers need to put the secondary location objectives 1st, the possible objectives includes (but not limited to):

      a. A new communication/product the brand has, then they need to focus on highlighting the communication more than the qty to be merchandised. 
      b. Push extra qty or stocks to the store to capture a certain period/season high sales, then the focus should be maximising the capacity of the secondary location with less effort on the communication.
     c. Competing with a competitor for reasons like; shifting shoppers, fighting a new launch or a new communication the competitor has, in this case the secondary location criteria should be to be placed next to the competitors.

3. Very important watch-out is the level of planning and alignment, such initiative will alway include at least:
1- The brand management team.
2- Trade marketing team.
3- Sales / Customer management team
4- Logistic team.
5- Merchandising team (very important as they are they represents the brand in the store)
6. The customer.

Every stakeholder of the above needs to be aware and aligned on the plan as everyone has work to do in the chain, managing to aware and on-board every stake holders on the initiative objectives & their roles in the process will always resulted in the initiative success.

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Thanks all for your time, and as always every feedback and comments is highly appreciated. Please share with your friends and colleagues, it is matter of button click below :)

Hasan Bashammakh

Follow @HasanBash