Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Yield Management & Pricing: Disney To Have Demand Based Fares In Its Theme Parks

Yield management pricing is a common technique used in the tourism business. Depending on the demand, prices vary in order to secure both revenues and full hotel occupancy. Disney has decided to adapt its pricing policy in order to apply different fares depending on the park's business

"Tickets at Disneyland from Monday to Thursday will be deemed "value" tickets and will be priced at $95. "Regular" tickets include most weekends and the summer season, and they will be priced at $105. "Peak" tickets will include most of the month of December, spring break and July weekends, and they will cost $119, according to The Orange County Register.
Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom will be affected in a similar way, but prices will be higher,The New York Times reported. "Regular" tickets will cost $110, "Value" tickets will remain at $105, and "peak" tickets will cost a whopping $124."
Now I am not sure about the move. Indeed, you need to be cautious about these kinds of move.
  • Firstly, you need to change your pricing policy, and you may turn off some of your loyal customers. How could they understand such a dramatic move, especially as it results in highering the ticket price.
  • Secondly, you also need to have a clear benefit from the seasonal tickets. Would you have less people in line? Extra shows? Special features? If not, I think it will turn more people off than lead extra revenues from the higher prices.
Now, I don't say it is a bad pricing strategy, as it works well for example in the airline business, but it did mostly as it resulted in having lower fares to limit costs of half empty airplanes. We will see how it goes in the long run.


Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Lidl Is Undertaking An Ecommerce Strategy




Lidl goes on with its strategy to modernize its brand image by launching new businesses. 

  • In store, they have improve a lot their fresh produce offer.
  • In terms of advertizing, they multiply TV and radio campaigns
  • They modernize also their store network by investing massively in point of sales marketing.
But Lidl has recently decided to launch Ecommerce presence in both Germany and Belgium. They propose their technical products (no food products) online, with clear claims in term of quality of service:

  • 30 days to give back if the product is deceiving
  • 2 days home delivery
  • Securized payment system

It is interesting, because I believe Lidl will experience tremendous success with this strategy.
  • They will be able to provide a better service to customers (most of the time those products are out of stock very fast, especially as they are daily offers).
  • They will be able to access other customers that may not go to their stores.
  • Therefore they will be able to leverage extra sales.
Lidl has a clear strategy, and I believe that they execute it very well. 

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Film review: Quai D'Orsay

J'ai eu l'opportunité la semaine dernière de voir un film assez intéresant: Quai D'Orsay, avec notamment Thierry Lhermitte. L'acteur joue le rôle d'un pseudo Dominique de Villepin, alors à l'époque ministre des affaires étrangères. On suit le parcours d'un jeune politique embauché pour écrire les discours du ministre des affaires étrangères.

Ce film est vraiment très intéressant à bien des égards, qui nous explique beaucoup comment fonctionne nos élites politiques français.

La multiplicité des conseillers
Le film est marqué par les relations que peuvent entretenir les différents conseillers, dont il est parfois difficile de comprendre leur réel rôle. Chacun travail de son côté souvent pour leur intérêt personnel, et la plupart du temps ils ne sont pas d'accord. Ce qui en résulte, c'est que le texte est réecrit un nombre incalculable de fois, alors que le texte n'est finalement relu par personne.









La personnalité incontrôlable du ministre

Finalement, la personnalité du ministre est pointé du doigt. Il est colérique, il change d'avis tout le temps. Il se focalise sur des détails souvent futile (voir la scène du stabilo). Il relie des livres de philosophe sur lequel il base l'intégralité de sa vision et de son travail. Il insulte les ambassadeurs, il a un langage très grossier la plupart du temps, et considère très peu ces partenaires internationaux.




Des difficultés à vivre dans leurs temps
Cela a eu lieu début des années 2000. Et on apprend que le ministère n'avait pas Internet, et avait un service télégramme qui voyageait systématiquement avec le ministre, alors qu'ils n'envoyaient jamais de télégramme.

Conclusion
Il faut bien évidemment prendre ce film comme une comédie, mais je pense qu'il montre bien certains problèmes sur la manière dont nos dirigeants politiques gère la France. C'est un film très divertissant, que je vous conseille.

Pour finir, le discours, historique, de Dominique de Villepin à l'ONU.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Business case: How To Save Vivarte


Vivarte has been a retail group that has struggled the past few years. The French company has experienced a lot of CEO changes as they have never really been able to find a clear path for long term growth. Vivarte has recently appointed former Monoprix CEO Stéphane Maquaire as a CEO in the last move to save the company. 

And the company is really struggling. Sales have decreased by 600 millions € in 2 years (-20%). Moreover, they had to shut down 40% of its La Halle banner, their largest store brand. And as you can see on the chart bellow (in French), most of its leading brands are going in limbo seriously.


The clothing store market is really struggling, with the new competition of new discount channels and the growth of the Internet. The task of Stéphane Maquaire will be difficult. He indeed needs to give a clear vision of each brands position in the market and stuck to it. Even though the clothing store business implies to change quite often store concept to stay in fashion, the positionning of each brands have struggled by switching from discount to mass market quite to often. 

I like the strategy that is proposed by French magazine LSA:
Focus on The Internet
Vivarte has not yet unleashed the full potential of omnichannel marketing, whereas it owns a very large store network that could empower each of the brands of a great click & collect network.
I believe that there is a lot of room for improvement for that matter.

Work on the different brands
Maybe the group has too many brands, and it needs to work on some different ones to find the best interest in them. 

Try to find out synergies between the different business units


What is interesting in the choice of Stéphane Maquaire for this mission, is that he made an incredible job at working on the brand Monoprix, which is difficult to do in a FMCG context. It will be interesting to follow his strategy and how he executes it.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

De l'évolution des surfaces de vente face à la montée du Ecommerce

Excellent article que je vous recommande au sujet de l'évolution des surfaces de vente en France et dans le monde, réalisé par Kurt Salmons. En effet, nous sommes au coeur de la transformation du commerce:
  • Le E commerce est en phase de maturation, avec des croissances de part de marché qui se stabilise
  • Des enseignes brick & mortar qui ont déjà bien entamé leur mue en acteur multi canal, notamment en développant des sites Ecommerce mais également en développant le click & collect
  • Des enseignes qui ont déjà commencées à se concentrer. 

Quelques unes des idées fortes relayées par l'article:
  •  La nécessité de retravailler les parcs magasin. On le voit, la plupart des enseignes commencent à fermer des magasins lorsqu'ils sont non rentable ou non stratégique. La concurrence Internet + maturité des marchés + une augmentation des coûts d'exploitation (lié au marketing du point de vente, hausse des loyers, et plus faible CA/m2) = besoin de rationnaliser les parcs. Target, Walmart, Best Buy ont déjà commencé.
  • Néanmoins, il y a de la place pour de nouvelles enseignes internationales. On en a déjà parlé ici, mais Costco arrive en France lorsque Lidl se lance aux US. Kiko, Zara cartonne en France, quand l'Occitane est clairement une enseigne internationale. Lorsqu'il y a un concept fort, il y a encore de forte expansion de nombre de magasin, qui d'ailleurs jouisse de la rationnalisation des autres acteurs.
  • La necessité de travailler le marketing enseigne: Il faut travailler des réponses de distribution de plus en plus marketer, de plus en plus en lien avec les attentes clients et les spécificités des bassins de consommation. Plusieurs stratégie à mettre en place, soit à la Carrefour, avec une marque ombrelle, soit plus comme Casino (c'est là où je suis pas d'accord avec l'article, qui essaie de montrer la stratégie de Casino comme en phase avec Carrefour), qui multiplie les marques en fonction des attentes consommateurs: Franprix (proximité), Monoprix (Premium), Géant, Casino, spar (la montagne), Leader Price...
  • La necessité de clusteriser le front de vente: Celui qui l'a fait le mieux, c'est Best Buy aux US, avec une analyse chiffrée des zones de chalandise, pour organiser son merchandizing visuel, son offre catégorielle, ses services, etc... Cette analyse sera rendue beaucoup plus facile grâce au big data
  • Le besoin d'investir dans les systèmes d'informations: Afin de répondre aux challenges de la distribution du futur, des attentes consommateurs, du multi canal, mais également des coûts d'exploitation, le big data va être clé, pour pouvoir analyser et améliorer les process de décisions.

Ce qui est intéressant particulièrement avec cet article, c'est de bien voir que cela a déjà commencé, et que pour certains, il est peut être déjà trop tard.



Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Some Tips To Be More Efficient At Work

Time is for sure your most valuable asset. Everyone have the same number of hours per day, you can't get back the time you lost, and you need to make the best out of it. For the longest time, I have used the Getting Things Done Approach. To be honest, it is difficult to keep with it completely, but it has really worked for me for sure.

Forbes gives you 8 tipes to be efficient with your schedule. 

One of the secret I especially like, is the one also to deal with the non work related schedule: eating, sleeping, sport, extra activities. Because they are necessary to be fresh and make accurate decisions that will allow you to be more productive and efficient.

Monday, March 14, 2016

Negociation In Other Cultures



We all know that businesses work differently depending on the social and cultural backgrounds of corporations. It is the same thing for negotiation. Negotiation styles differ a lot depending in the country you are at. As a professionnal negotiator, I am used to negotiating in a French culture, which I know would be very different if I were to negotiate with Japanese people for example.


Nevertheless, even while negotiating with US companies, you may not have the same issues during the negotiation than when you are negotiating with a French cultural company.

I really like this video that explains well the difference in how the relationships are based between negotiators depending on their cultural background.

Indeed, the approach to emotions and confrontation vary a lot depending on the culture. People will not react the same depending on their paradigm.



The Harvard Business Review gives you clear tips on how to adapt to the negotiator culture in order to make your negotiation a success:



  1. Adapt the way you express disagreement.
  2. Know when to bottle it up or let it all out
  3. Learn how the other culture build its trust
  4. Avoid yes or no questions: Yes and/or no may not have the same meaning depending on the culture: Sometime the no is not absolute, but the other person is demanding a new proposal. So don't say no to avoid this missunderstanding
  5. Be careful about putting it in writing
I like the end of the article: "Finally, don’t forget the universal rules: When you are negotiating a deal, you need to persuade and react, to convince and finesse, pushing your points while working carefully toward an agreement."




Thursday, March 10, 2016

Some Interesting Thoughts On Walmart

Walmart has not done greatly those past few years. Even though they have invested massive amount of money to keep up with the online competition, they are failing to keep the growth pace of Amazon, and is still far behind. Walmart's online sales only represents 3% of its overal business, while Ecommerce accounts for about 30% of overal commerce nowadays...


I read a very interesting article about Walmarts problems. It outlines well the issues of the American giant. Especially, its news to shut down 269 stores worldwide shows well how important will be the strategy the firm will take in the next few years. 

If I were to highlight one specific paragraph: 

"There are many places where Walmart has missed keeping up with its retail competitors. But consider just one. If you shop at Walmart regularly for the items it specializes in—everyday supplies like diapers, paper towels, toothpaste, laundry detergent, deodorant, and corn flakes—well then Walmart has you on a kind of monthly payment plan. You go to Walmart, you fill your cart with vital supplies for your family, and as you check out, you know that almost everything in that cart will be gone in a week or two. And you’ll have to go back to Walmart and resupply.So why hasn’t Walmart figured out how to automate that process for us—how to make it frictionless, thoughtless, even brilliant? Way back in 1961, when Walmart was born, that was a core element of Sam Walton’s insight: Put everything in one store and assure your customers that the merchandise was as cheap or cheaper than anywhere else. Make shopping easy.Walmart has all that data. Walmart knows what people buy, it knows the pacing, it knows how often you need Tide versus Pampers versus Windex. And Walmart knows something else, too: It knows that no one, in 2016, relishes the effort of stocking up on all that stuff. For modern families, that’s not shopping—it’s not like wandering into an Apple store or even a Whole Foods. Those kinds of purchases are simply logistics, family-scale."
And this is a good question, because Walmart is facing Amazon which tries actually to do exactly the same. Provide the best prices with the best service in terms of automating customers decision making process.
Now I still believe Walmart has a lot of great assess that makes him one of the most efficient retailer on earth. But the struggles happening to Walmart shows well what kind of transformation the retail business is facing right now.


Wednesday, March 09, 2016

Mobile Marketing To Boost Shopper Experience In The Health & Beauty Experience



We all know mobile phones have changed the way people shop. Those high tech devices have empowered most of us with great tools to get content to make relevant purchasing decisions. But it is always better to have clear data about it. I found this very interesting article published on Mediapost about how shoppers want/or shop for health & beauty products thanks to their mobile phones

What is interesting is also to see how shoppers would rather use their cell phones than to ask for a sales representative in order to get advices on which products to choose. What does it imply? For the longest time, health & beauty retailers have incentived their sales person in order to influence shoppers' decision making process. But with more educated and tooled customers, the shopping experienced turned more into checking information on a mobile device. 

I still believe human interractions is better than contact with a machine, but nowadays customers don't get fooled about sponsored advices either by celebrities or sales people.

Also, it shows well that the digitalization of the point of sales go more onto personal mobile devices than to equip stores of multiple screens, simple because it allows shoppers to customize their experience.

"he Mintel study found that consumers have a wide range of interests in using mobile in the shopping process. Some even would be interested in using store-supplied mobile technology. This is what interests consumers regarding mobile involvement in shopping:
  • 66% -- Receiving rewards by scanning receipt with smartphone app
  • 58% -- Smartphone app that gives beauty product offers to redeem in-store
  • 54% -- Smartphone app that allows comparing of prices of beauty products
  • 51% -- Prefer to use retailer’s mobile website rather than installing their app when browsing for products on smartphone
  • 47% -- Redeem coupons received using smartphone when making in-store purchases
  • 45% -- Search for product information in-store on mobile device rather than ask a sales associate
  • 39% -- Using an in-store tablet provided by the store to research beauty products available
  • 36% -- Using in-store tablets provided by the store to pay for beauty products"

Tuesday, March 08, 2016

Vidéo: Intermarché de Clichy: Merchandising et retailing

J'ai déjà fait pour vous une visite de l'Intermarché de Clichy sur Seine il y a peu de temps. Le magasin n'a pas encore 1 an d'existence d'ailleurs. Je vous invite vraiment à y aller pour voir tout les partis prix et son côté ambitieux.

J'ai trouvé sur Internet une très bonne vidéo ou son propriétaire Stéphane Sinopoli explique son concept, et ses partis prix. Très intéressant, à voir. De plus, Stéphane a une vrai passion du commerce contagieuse, qui se ressent clairement sur cette vidéo.


Stephane Sinopoli - Intermarché from Samir Boutarene on Vimeo.

Sunday, March 06, 2016

Warehouse Automation As A Strategic Tool For Retailing



In this blog, I mostly discuss about retailing in a marketing and/or customer relationship management prospective. But there is one key element that actually can influence most of your retail business: Supply chain and logistics. Delivering the right product at the right time at the fewest cost possible is an art company like Walmart for the brick & mortar world and Amazon on the web are thriving on.

Leclerc has recently set some new warehouses models with automatic delivery preparations.
Those kind of projects have different goals:

  • Lower the cost of the warehouse handling, whil securing fast preparation
  • Be more up to date to manage large product ranges at a lower cost
  • Be ready for the battle with the Ecommerce, that have already top of the line supply chain and warehouses.
I believe that warehouse automation, and the efficient way of managing such projects will be key to the future success of retailers.