If you’re wondering why merchandising is important, consider this - over one-third of product volume is sold with merchandising support across 39% of CPG categories, including grocery. Hence, compelling food and beverage merchandising is critical to grabbing shoppers’ attention in today’s cutthroat retail landscape. Below are three types of merchandising strategies your food or beverage brand can use to pop against the competition.
Excite With Experiences
It’s no secret that in-store demos directly correlate to increased sales. But how can brands take sampling events to the next level? Boursin cheese did just that with its #Boursinsensorium campaign.
The company combined a product sampling with virtual reality, in which shoppers were able to use VR headsets to explore the origins of the various ingredients used in the cheese as they ate it. In this way, Boursin was able to create a complex sensory experience for consumers, making the sampling much more memorable than standard food merchandising tactics.
Build Trust Through Transparency
A whopping 94% of consumers indicate it’s important that brands are transparent about what’s in their food and how it’s made, according to the results of a KPMG survey. As part of their retail merchandising strategy, food and beverage brands should consider the role of packaging and how they can use it to promote transparency.
Take the example of Fishpeople, a manufacturer of ready-to-cook seafood kits. The company is able to be “ridiculously transparent” by tagging each kit with a unique code that users can enter in on their site, where they’ll be redirected to a page that details the fishermen who harvested the seafood in the kit, as well as sourcing information about the other included ingredients. By remembering the role of packaging in its overall food merchandising scheme, Fishpeople is able to disclose invaluable information about their supply chain to customers.
Delight With Digital
One of the most prominent food and beverage merchandising trends is incorporating a digital component intro traditional grocery store displays. Millennial consumers in particular crave a unique in-store experience, and adding something interactive enhances a brand’s retail merchandising strategy.
If an industry giant like Coca-Cola is doing it, then you know this merchandising technique has promise to increase sales. Coke is using digital signage attached to endcaps at supermarkets to deliver branded content and e-coupons to store passerby. This new system is powered by Google Cloud technology can tweak content messaging to passing shoppers based on data from their smartphones.
“We’re using the power of the cloud to bring a real-time, media-rich experience to shoppers in the store.”
-Greg Chambers (Global Group Director of Digital Innovation at Coca-Cola)
Retail merchandising techniques in the food and beverage industry are constantly evolving to appeal to consumers’ dynamic tastes. Rather than altering their products, sometimes brands just need to get creative in their display tactics. Providing a memorable experience, being transparent, and utilizing technology are three strategies guaranteed to attract hungry and thirsty customers.