Collaborative planning stole the stage at the National Retail Federation (NRF) 97th Annual Convention, as DemandTec customers Food Lion and Cadbury-Schweppes Americas Beverages discussed consumer-centric pricing and promotions. The special NRF Forum session, held January 13 at New York’s Jacob Javits Center, highlighted the significant efficiency and effectiveness benefits retailers and their trading partners are seeing by deploying DemandTec solutions.

Stores Magazine article about the NRF forum session. (PDF)

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Charles Davis
Vice President of
Strategy & Analytics

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Lewis Campbell
Vice President of
Merchandising Services

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Craig Hodnett
Vice President of
Category Management

Lewis Campbell, vice president of merchandising services, and Charles Davis, vice president of strategy & analytics, both from Food Lion, discussed how the supermarket retailer traditionally had a one size- fits-all approach, with every store looking the same. Then, in the 1990s, competition caused the retailer to customize its stores to meet specific customer needs. How did they do this?

• Food Lion analyzed and segmented its customer base
• Grouped stores with similar customer demographics into clusters
• Created a family of banners, including Food Lion, Bloom, Bottom Dollar, Harvey’s and Reid’s.

As a result, Campbell said this changed the way the company is managed, and moved it to a collaboration model with its suppliers, including Cadbury-Schweppes.

Using insight generated by DemandTec applications, Cadbury-Schweppes and Food Lion jointly determine the optimal inventory and pricing for carbonated-beverages, while eliminating what Hodnett referred to as “dead space”.

“Speed to shelf is a real differentiator, and this gives Food Lion an edge. In 2005 it took us an average of 79 minutes to design a planogram. In 2006 it took 73 minutes. In 2007, it took 12,” he said.