Consumer Insights: Where does the CG Industry Stand?
January 14, 2009 - Gaining consumer insights has been the holy grail of the consumer goods industry for decades. Historically, retailers shared little information, and what was available was used for account management purposes only. Therefore, getting to a true understanding of what consumers really want and need was a costly and difficult process exacerbated by the latency of much of the available data. Fortunately, much more data is now available between syndicated data providers and direct feeds from the retailers themselves, yet the goal is still the same; decoding the consumer.
In a recent research report, titled "Leveraging Consumer Insights," CGT partnered with Wipro Technologies to take a closer look at how CG manufacturers are getting consumer insights and what they are doing with that information. What we found is that to truly leverage all the available downstream data, a multi-disciplinary approach is most common, involving various data sources, processes, departments and governance structures.
First, let's remember that communication is a two-way street and messages are flowing in both directions. The overwhelming majority (73 percent) of CG companies still use traditional media to reach out to consumers, which is not surprising. About one-third use social networking and another third of respondents work with channel partners for e-commerce. Very few are leveraging retailer kiosks, which is interesting considering the emphasis retailers seem to be putting on that particular method. What we did find, however, is that the largest companies, particularly those with more than $10 billion in annual revenue, use all of the methods we asked about, and use more communication vehicles than their smaller counterparts.
On the flip side, we also found commonalities by company size when we looked at the processes CG companies put in place to capture inbound consumer related data. A full 58 percent capture such data with Web site registrations, surveys and panel research, and another half (multiple responses were permitted) work with their retail partners to get the information, presumably point-of-sale or even loyalty card data sharing.
The downside, however, is that most CG organizations do not have a governance structure in place that is well-equipped to handle the influx of this data. This initiative is growing in importance as more organizations understand the inherent benefits of leveraging consumer data throughout the enterprise, but many are still not as effective as they could be and many are also confining consumer insights to sales and marketing, with 33 percent reporting that their marketing group controls consumer insights. Overall, only 21 percent of our respondents have a dedicated consumer insights group headed by a high level leader in place, with another 15 percent having dedicated staff overseeing the data and providing analytics for other groups. Again, the largest Tier-1 companies are ahead of the competition, many of them having a dedicated insights group in place led by a vice president or above.
In this difficult and competitive environment, truly understanding the consumer is a pre-requisite to success. Technology has enabled much more data sharing, and for many organizations, it has enabled the analysis of massive quantities of data to glean insights into their customers, both retailers and consumers.
To access this research report, titled "Leveraging Consumer Insights," in its entirety, click here.
In a recent research report, titled "Leveraging Consumer Insights," CGT partnered with Wipro Technologies to take a closer look at how CG manufacturers are getting consumer insights and what they are doing with that information. What we found is that to truly leverage all the available downstream data, a multi-disciplinary approach is most common, involving various data sources, processes, departments and governance structures.
First, let's remember that communication is a two-way street and messages are flowing in both directions. The overwhelming majority (73 percent) of CG companies still use traditional media to reach out to consumers, which is not surprising. About one-third use social networking and another third of respondents work with channel partners for e-commerce. Very few are leveraging retailer kiosks, which is interesting considering the emphasis retailers seem to be putting on that particular method. What we did find, however, is that the largest companies, particularly those with more than $10 billion in annual revenue, use all of the methods we asked about, and use more communication vehicles than their smaller counterparts.
On the flip side, we also found commonalities by company size when we looked at the processes CG companies put in place to capture inbound consumer related data. A full 58 percent capture such data with Web site registrations, surveys and panel research, and another half (multiple responses were permitted) work with their retail partners to get the information, presumably point-of-sale or even loyalty card data sharing.
The downside, however, is that most CG organizations do not have a governance structure in place that is well-equipped to handle the influx of this data. This initiative is growing in importance as more organizations understand the inherent benefits of leveraging consumer data throughout the enterprise, but many are still not as effective as they could be and many are also confining consumer insights to sales and marketing, with 33 percent reporting that their marketing group controls consumer insights. Overall, only 21 percent of our respondents have a dedicated consumer insights group headed by a high level leader in place, with another 15 percent having dedicated staff overseeing the data and providing analytics for other groups. Again, the largest Tier-1 companies are ahead of the competition, many of them having a dedicated insights group in place led by a vice president or above.
In this difficult and competitive environment, truly understanding the consumer is a pre-requisite to success. Technology has enabled much more data sharing, and for many organizations, it has enabled the analysis of massive quantities of data to glean insights into their customers, both retailers and consumers.
To access this research report, titled "Leveraging Consumer Insights," in its entirety, click here.