Retail Is A Media: How Carrefour Uses Its Store For Advertizing Purposes

Since the First Moment Of Truth concept, it has been a while that POS (Point of Sale) marketing has been developped in order to boost sales in store. Of course, a good advertizing during the shopping experience could be far more productive than advertizing on standard media while customers are not really into the mindset of editing their shopping list.

Carrefour has developped its POS tools in order to convince suppliers to use them. You will have below a very interesting video showing examples on how to use their services. 

Now, what I believe is still lacking while discussing about the impact of point of sales marketing, is the real impact of it. Indeed, in order to really trigger the sales, it is important this point of sales marketing effort is linked with other triggers, especially promotions. We all know how much of an impact it could be to have both leveraged at the same time.

What do you think about it?

Category Management: Comments On End of the Aisle Displays

I got this picture from the Twitter feed of POSInsight. You can see a point of sales marketing display of a brand of milk. But I have several thoughts crossing my mind as I watch this end of the aisle display:

• First of all, obviously, the display is great. The milk category is for sure one of commodities. It is therefore difficult to create difference between product, as the product is basic, and the way to create added value is difficult.
• It emphasizes the fact that point of sales marketing is indeed a powerful medium. It could leverage sales at least as much as a TV advertizing campaign. Therefore it is important not to forget about it. It is always powerful to communicate while the customer is shopping. Thus you maximize your chance to be taken into account during the decision making process.
• Nevertheless, I have a negative comment. I have been the category manager of the milk section. It is a large volume market, especially while you have commercials. This POS marketing has been designed for brand equity building. But end of the aisle display are great sales tool, and you need to generate as much sales as possible. And when I see the few products available on the display, I am sure that they would go fast out of stock.

So just to sum up what makes a great end of aisle display:

• Theatralization: to be seen from the customer
• Product availability, which is lacking in this example.