Seven No or Low Spend ways to access Category Information and Insight.
- Charlie
- Apr 18, 2024
- 2 min read
Market data is a big investment and sometimes its simply not feasible for your budget. Your business might be growing but not yet in a position to invest. Conversely, you might have products selling in a range of categories, and you might not be able to purchase data for all areas. So what do you do?
Internal data
Firstly, don't under estimate the existing data you already have access to within your business. If you can understand the volume being sold each week to a customer and the number of stores where the product is stocked, you can achieve an approximate rate of sale with assumptions and caveats about stock replenishment. This will initially help you rank the performance of your products and understand best sellers. Internal data can also give you trended information and orders over time, can help you assess seasonality of products.
Low cost resources
Trade magazine subscriptions are a very resourceful and cost efficient way of securing data. The Grocer produces really helpful Category Reports, which often include top line data, insight and analysis that can be used and referenced in reviews. You can also benchmark your own product performance against the reported figures. Kantar also publishes market shares and insight reports with market data.
Store audits
You can glean a lot of information simply by walking into and through a store. How many products are ranged? What are the prices, pack weights, pack formats? How do they rank and compare? How are they used? You can do this across multiple, relevant stores and create a view of the market, identify gaps and make recommendations based on the information you collate.
Instore intercepts
Standing at fixtures and chatting to people who buy your products can unearth new insights. You can gain permission to do this at the store or through contacts in the retailer. Prepare some structured questions in advance by giving some thought about what you need to find out, that is going to help you review the range.
Product feedback and reviews
What happens when consumers contact your business about your products? Who holds that information? Can you access comments and complaints? Similarly with online reviews - what is being said? Are there any interesting comments and themes coming through?
Ask your suppliers
Does your business have suppliers providing packaging and ingredients? These businesses may produce their own annual insight reports that are designed to be presented to their suppliers. What can you learn from these reports?
Webinars
Large data and insight agencies often host free webinars about key industry topics. These can offer new information and insight about trends within the industry.
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