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Can your Sales Team Be Utilized for Marketing and Pricing Research?
Now our newsletter No. 42 can be read in English language. What is it about?
Companies in b2b sector often fail, when they look for useful reports on market price evolvement. Especially in medium-sized sector they run into nothing, because there is no comprehensive reports from any market research institutes available. Extensive market studies do not prove cost-effective here because markets tend to be smaller and highly segmented. You might ask why not not harness your own sales team for market and pricing research. This newsletter dives into the matter und will give you answers.
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Our Newsletter No. 42 can now also be read in English. What is it about?
Companies in the B2B sector often fail when searching for useful reports on the development of market prices. Especially in the medium-sized sector, they run into nothing, because there are no comprehensive reports from market research institutes. Extensive market studies are not cost-effective here, as the markets are usually smaller and highly segmented. You might ask yourself whether you could not use your own sales team for market and price research. This newsletter gets to the bottom of the matter and gives you answers.
Pricing Seminar on 30.11/01.12.2023 in Hamburg
Pricing is one of the most underestimated marketing tools. Therefore, the potential for sustainable value creation inherent in it is often largely overlooked. Many companies still lack a long-term strategy to deal with the daily, sometimes complex challenges of the pricing process.
In this two-day practical intensive seminar, pricing expert Professor Dr. Hans-Christian Riekhof provides a comprehensible practical methodological framework for increasing the pricing competence of companies. Using four levers, not only is the theory taught, but these are also applied using practical examples from the participants’ everyday work. Therefore, participants from various industries are recommended to bring specific pricing issues from their own work area into the seminar to work on them there.
The seminar is aimed at executives and experts in marketing and sales who are confronted with pricing questions in everyday life and who are looking for a pragmatic way to embed price decisions in a long-term pricing strategy and thereby increase value creation.
As always, early registration is recommended as places are limited.
Read how previous participants rate the seminar
https://www.unicconsult.com/pricing-seminar/teilnehmerstimmen/
More information at:
www.unicconsult.com/pricing-seminar
Kaufland Attacks Discounters with Low-Price Campaign
Kaufland is once again attacking the discount trade. The message that the company can also do discount cheap – this message is currently being communicated to the target groups via a current TV commercial. Over 7,000 items at discount prices, more than 300 special offers every week, plus extra discounts with the Kaufland Card: With the Kaufland price campaign “Now more than ever – Save more with Kaufland”, the Schwarz subsidiary wants to demonstrate this price competence and relies on a humorously designed TV commercial. This refers to the company’s successful discount cheap campaign, with which Kaufland humorously drew attention to its low prices as early as February of this year, writes the Lebensmittelzeitung.
Kaufland price campaign focuses on cheap shopping
Christoph Schneider, Managing Director Marketing Germany, explains that the issue of price is playing an increasingly important role for many people in the current time. “Our new campaign ‘Now more than ever’ consciously addresses this and puts the issue of cheap shopping in the spotlight. Our clear promise to our customers: At Kaufland, the customer continues to shop at a low price and can save money through particularly many offers.”
Pricing expert Riekhof: Is positioning against discounters the best option?
Pricing expert Hans-Christian Riekhof, Professor of International Marketing at the Private University of Göttingen, views the strategy of the Kaufland price campaign somewhat critically. “In times of rising prices, a price campaign certainly makes a lot of sense. Whether positioning against discounters is the best of all options, however, should be questioned. After all, Kaufland is making fun of itself, because in the TV spot, the young mother didn’t ‘get’ the whole issue either. It’s probably more complicated than you think.”
Links
Report on the Kaufland price campaign in the Lebensmittelzeitung (Paywall):
https://www.lebensmittelzeitung.net/handel/nachrichten/preiskampagne-kaufland-greift-erneut-den-discount-handel-an-165133?crefresh=1
Screenshot: Kaufland TV commercial
Sales Marketing on the Communication of Price Increases
In times of the Corona pandemic and the Ukraine war, it is a difficult task to communicate price increases successfully. Under the title “Trapped in the Price Spiral”, the marketing magazine Absatzwirtschaft investigates the question of how brands can still succeed.
In the confusion of raw material shortages, tearing supply chains and record inflation as effects, it is becoming increasingly difficult for brand companies and retailers to adjust prices and to communicate this successfully. In answering the most important questions on the subject, the magazine also sought the assessment and advice of Hans-Christian Riekhof, Professor of International Marketing and expert in price management at the Private University of Göttingen.
Pricing expert Riekhof: Price controlling is underdeveloped in many companies
In response to the question of how marketing should accompany the communication of price increases, he assigns the task to marketing to announce increases and prepare end consumers for them. These messages would always also indirectly address competitors.
At the B2B level between manufacturers and retailers, the role of marketing is less. Here, marketing or product management must develop the line of argument, but the actual implementation of the price increases is the responsibility of sales, the pricing expert is quoted. Subsequently, good price controlling is required, i.e. the subsequent analysis of one’s own price strategy, “a function that is underdeveloped in many companies”, according to Riekhof.
Photo/Screenshot: ©Eva Vasari
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Links
Read the full article on absatzwirtschaft.de:
www.absatzwirtschaft.de/gefangen-in-der-preisspirale-233977
Read/download the full article as pdf:
https://www.unicconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Gefangen-in-der-Preisspirale-Absatzwirtschaft.pdf
Digitization of Retail: Trade Magazine Reports on Solutions from locandis
On the topic of “Digitization of Retail”, the magazine Rundschau für den Lebensmittelhandel has now reported under the title “The Next Step”. The digitization of retail cannot be stopped, but it is less clear how the process must actually proceed in order to stay in the game as a retailer, and which technological upheavals will ultimately shape the shopping of the future.
In the course of the research for the article, the experts for suitable solutions around location-based marketing, indoor navigation, digital customer cards from the Hamburg company locandis were also asked for an assessment. Thus, the following is reported about co-managing director Prof. Dr. Hans-Christian Riekhof and locandis, among others.
Digitalization of Retail: Digital customer card with functions such as location-based marketing and in-store navigation
…With his company Locandis, Riekhof has now implemented a system in the Hagebaumarkt C.J.Wigger in Neumünster that could close all these gaps. “The basis is the digital customer card, which basically does the same as Amazon: it records what the buying behavior was in the past. And this card can then be connected with various functions, e.g. an in-store navigation and a location-based marketing, since I know when the customer is at which shelf.” This opens up completely new ways of marketing, because if a customer is e.g. in the confectionery department, it can be assumed that he is also interested in this product group – which makes him more receptive to tailored advertising at the scene…. “We digitize everything possible. Therefore, stationary retail should also digitally map the shopping process”, says Riekhof.
Links:
You can read/download the detailed article here as a pdf:
https://www.unicconsult.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/RUNDSCHAU-2202_Seiten-15-21.pdf
