I'm Back, For Now - Some Notes and Analysis

First, I want to apologize to all those whose comments sat in limbo for many many many (many, repeat ad nauseum) months. I haven't been checking in recently, and quite frankly, I forgot that comments were moderated. So. Apologies. A special thank you goes to Umbria Listens for their comment letting me know that my opinion does, in fact, mean something. Given their mission, it's at least a little comforting to know that somewhere, out there, in the bleak business world, an executive (or, more likely an over-paid middle manager) is reading a report that contains either: one of my blog posts, or, more likely, a higher number for the "this item was blogged about" category in their marketing reports.

Anyway. Today's post was instigated by a beer industry blog that I read. For those unaware, I've recently begun brewing my own beer and I am in the planning stages of maybe, possibly, if the stars align properly, trying to turn it into a small business. I've been looking around the web and I found a good blog, called Brew Blog (it's actually called "Brew" Blog - but I'm not really sure what the quotation marks add - I believe that it is, technically, some sort of attempt to reference their magazine, also called "brew" but retain the source identifying portion in some asinine attempt to gain trademark rights over the term "brew" for publications pertaining to the beer industry by using the same term in a "family of marks" style). I read it a few times a week. It is, technically, under the auspices of Miller Brewing Company, but they assure me that Miller doesn't actually have any editorial authority. That seems to be true, so I'll take their word for it. For now.

However, today's post makes it abundantly obvious that the author does work for the beer industry. It's a short post, and I'm going to reprint it for the purposes of commentary. The article is in color, my comments are not. Enjoy. My apologies in advance if I come off as some sort of jack ass.

Cutting Beer Displays Could Hurt Retailers

This sounds like a threat. Like what he really means is: if you cut beer displays my best friend Guido is going to show up and convince you otherwise.

Displays have major impact on purchases behavior.

Interestingly, this is a true statement. What's even more interesting are the store gimmicks of displaying a "score" for the item and a quick "review" of the item from some industry source. This is popular with wine, and I've see some of it for beer. For example, you'll see "87. This wine pours a dark mahagony. It has a fruity, slightly acidic smell; but an oak aged taste that is guaranteed to impress your tastebuds. Brought to you by Winelover magazine." Apparently, people fall for these things all the time. Even people who know better. They use excuses like "it's nice to have more information." Ignoring the fact that the information comes from the source interested in selling you the product. It's sort of like believing GW when he tells you that the war is going well. It's amazing, and a sign of moderate competence in the marketing industry that everyone doesn't just give themselves 99's.

A growing number of retailers are contemplating “clean store” policies as more displays clutter their aisles and annoy customers.

Good. Those huge Miller Football displays annoy the crap out of me. There's such a thing as a "display" then there's "setting up a small football field in the beer aisle."

While such a thinning could improve shopper satisfaction, retailers need to keep in mind the importance of displays for key categories – including beer. Rather than sweeping out all displays, retailers should maintain focus on critical categories to ensure efficient use of floor space.

This is one of my favorite lines: "... retailers need to keep in mind the importance of displays ..." Oh. Really. How important is that 20' by 20' space eater piled with 300 cases of Miller Beer? To the retailer? It seems to me that all it does, for the retailer, is eat up floor space that could otherwise be taken by other products, create an impediment for the consumer, and cause massive inventory pile-ups. It seems that the best thing for a retailer might actually be to reduce the amount of Miller (or A-B, or whatever) it sells and increase sales on products that actually have higher margins.

According to an analysis of ACNielsen research by Miller Brewing Company, 26 percent of beer sold in supermarkets is sold on display. By dollars that ranks after snacks and carbonated beverages.

Ummm...OK...I'm struggling with how this is "good for retailers." By reverse logic, 74 percent of beer is NOT sold on display. If there were no displays, 100 percent of beer would be sold NOT on display. So what? But, the more interesting thing that this sentence suggests is that they actually have some way of tracking how much is bought from a display. Think about it. You walk up to the counter with a case of Miller Lite. How does the counter know you took that off a display? Well. In one respect the answer is obvious: the barcode. But, how do they know that barcode was part of the display? Did the minimum wage lackey scan it in? Did Miller provide separate pallets and provide instructions that one pallet was to be only for display? And, if that's the case, they actually trusted the minimum wage lackeys to do it?!? You see my point.

Moreover, beer is the second biggest category in supermarkets in terms of weekly sales dollars per square foot of space, according to the consultancy Willard Bishop.

Reducing displays on high-traffic driving categories such as beer could weaken promotional sales lifts and exacerbate promotional out of stocks.

Huh? Ok. Beer is a traffic-driving category. This means that people don't need displays to remind them to buy beer. The display could influence the Miller/Bud decision, but what does the supermarket care? Moreover, how does reducing these displays weaken promotional sales? The people are already in the stores buying beer, they will, presumably, see the (less-monstrous) displays for the supermarket promotional products. Plus, beer isn't sold in grocery stores everywhere (like here in Wisconsin) so it's a non-factor. And how exactly reducing displays for beer would exacerbate promotional out of stocks is a question we will leave for contemplation in the great beyond.

Suggestions for preventing this include: prioritizing display activities on categories that deliver high sales dollars per square foot; shift wine displays to beer because beer has significantly higher sales-per-foot productivity; and use “out of department” beer displays to drive impulse and cross-category purchases.

My favorite part: best way to prevent bad consequences: "shift wine displays to beer." I should have guessed. I can't say how much I love this sentence. First of all because the semi-colon is my favorite punctuation mark, and this sentence has TWO of them. Second, for the idea that the very premise of the article was complaining that supermarkets want to get rid of displays; this sentence encourages them to not only that beer displays are the best idea in retail history, but that other displays should be gotten rid of and MORE beer displays allowed and those extra beer displays should be place outside of the beer section in other parts of the supermarket. Awesome.