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In grocery, everything begins and ends with the shopper in mind. Brands and retailers must work together to deliver seamless, personalized, and value-driven experiences at the right moment. Data powers these efforts by providing insights into shopper behavior, sales performance, competition, and operations, helping drive smarter decisions and stronger partnerships across the path to purchase. This report highlights the key areas needed to strengthen collaboration across strategy, operations, merchandising, marketing, sales, and technology to create more connected shopper experiences.
Key Takeaways:
Hear directly from brand and retail experts as they discuss how shifts in shopper expectations, category management, and new item launches are reshaping the industry — and how brands and retailers can collaborate more effectively to drive category growth.
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Winning Outcomes: Grocery Category Collaboration From Insight To Action: Understanding How Brands & Retailers Collaborate To Win
Table of Contents Introduction | Who Do Brands & Retailers Serve? | Market Intelligence | Merchandising & Shopper Insights | Pricing & Promotion | Assortment | Conclusion
1. Introduction
Everything Starts And Ends With The Shopper In grocery, everything begins and ends with the shopper. Across brands and retailers, every strategy, activation, and partnership is built to meet shopper needs, inspire choice, and deliver value. As we look further within the natural and organic food landscape as expectations continue to advance, so must the ability to create seamless, personalized, and connected experiences.
The Power Of Collaboration Delivering the right experience at the right time requires strong brand–retailer collaboration. Success depends on alignment across strategy, operations, and execution, supported by a clear understanding of how organizations work and make decisions. While retail feels seamless to shoppers, it relies on tight coordination across sales, marketing, merchandising, operations, and technology. When aligned, these teams create better experiences and stronger partnerships.
Turning Data Into Action Data underpins every decision. Insights across sales, shopper behavior, competitive activity, and operations help brands and retailers understand what drives performance and where to make smarter decisions across the entire path to purchase.
2. Who Do Brands & Retailers Serve? Key Topics: Meeting Shopper Needs | Decision Catalysts | Creating Value For Clients
Meeting Shoppers Needs Everything we do is for the shopper. In the grocery industry, brands and retailers are adapting their strategies, activations, and partnerships to meet evolving shopper needs, inspire purchase decisions, and drive value across channels. As consumers move fluidly between anywhere commerce, winning attention now requires seamless, consistent, and engaging experiences at every touchpoint. Those who understand shopper behavior, anticipate needs, and deliver value across the full journey are best positioned to turn browsers into loyal, repeat customers.
Decision Catalyst — The Inner Workings Of Successful Partnerships The retailer brand relationship is a connected ecosystem driven by shopper insight, strategic alignment, operational execution, and long-term value creation. While shoppers experience a seamless journey, delivering requires cross-functional coordination and a clear roadmap ahead of any activations.
Horizontal Practices — Business: Shopper Insights | Category Management & Analytics | Sales Strategy | Marketing | Portfolio Strategy | Retail Execution | Procurement | Legal & Compliance
IT & Technologies: Enterprise Architecture & Platforms | Data & Analytics Enablement | Digital & E-Commerce | Sales & Trade Technology | Marketing Technology | Supply Chain & Operations Technology | Cybersecurity, Risk & Compliance | Integration & API Management | Automation & Productivity | IT Governance & Enablement
Creating Value For Clients — Navigating Execution Effective brands turn shelf visibility into sustained retail performance by aligning brand strategy, shopper insight, and retail execution across key levers such as pricing, assortment, merchandising, and e-commerce. When these elements work in sync, they attract the right shoppers, optimize value, and build long-term loyalty for both brands and retailers.
Goal: Satisfy Shoppers — key activities include:
Success depends on navigation of evolving data, ongoing trade and everyday pricing pressures, and the need for consistency across channels — while continuously adapting to shifting shopper needs.
“There’s a saying, it’s easy to get on shelf, it’s hard to stay on shelf. But now it’s really hard to get on shelf and harder to stay on shelf because space has gotten tighter and more competitive. On shelf must deliver strong productivity and reset decisions have become far more data-driven and centralized than ever before. Retailers are relying heavily on syndicated data, loyalty insights, velocity benchmarks, and you’ve got to have a high performing item to make the cut.” — Henry Kassendorf, CEO Remedy Organics
3. Market Intelligence Key Topics: What Is It? | How Do They Work In Sync?
Market Intelligence: What Is It? Market intelligence combines competitor activity, product performance, market trends, and customer behavior to provide a continuous, holistic view of market dynamics. These elements are interconnected, with competitor moves, trends, and customer behaviors shaping strategy and growth outcomes. Effective intelligence relies on ongoing data collection, structured analysis, and close collaboration between analysts and decision-makers to turn insights into actionable business decisions.
Components:
Turning Data Into Growth Intelligence shows what’s happening in a category, why it matters, and where growth opportunities exist — through understanding shopper behavior, competitor response, and market dynamics. By combining sales, market share, household, promotional, trend, innovation, and operational data, brands and retailers gain a complete market view. This enables smarter decisions on assortment, pricing, promotions, and innovation, driving growth, profitability, and stronger shopper engagement.
Key Types Of Market Intelligence
“There has to be a focus on brand health. It’s not just about growth. There’s a lot of brands growing, but it’s a leaky bucket with growing distribution, where velocities have dropped. We really track average retail price. Have average retails come down significantly and is it just being supported by heavy promotional spend and as soon as that promotional spend stops, the velocity?” — Henry Kassendorf, CEO Remedy Organics
Better Together The different types of market intelligence work together to give retailers and brands a complete view of performance and opportunity. Sales data shows what’s happening, shopper insights explain why, and pricing, assortment, and promotion data reveal how to respond. Layering in competitive insights and trend adds context on the broader market. When combined, these inputs create clearer, more connected decisions that improve performance, strengthen alignment, and drive better outcomes for both partners.
4. Merchandising & Shopper Insights Key Topics: Building A Shopper-Centric Shelf | Measuring & Optimizing Assortment Productivity | Driving Short-Term Category Performance & Long-Term Growth
The “Why” Behind The Planogram (POG) A successful category reset begins with shopper understanding and performance data to maximize impact. A well-designed planogram is foundational to retail success for both retailers and brands.
Key POG Benefits:
Understanding The Shopper It starts with identifying data trends that reveal what shoppers value. For example, in milk:
Animal Type (Att Sales % Chg | Attribute Share):
Label Claims & Certification:
Source: SPINS AttLab; Refrigerated & Plant Based Milk Natural Channel, Latest 52 Weeks Ending 1.25.26
Key trends: Rising demand for Organic & Grass-Fed label claims; growth across distinct milk types such as A2 & various plant-based options. These trends show where volume is shifting and which attributes drive growth, informing assortment, space allocation, and planogram placement.
Some brands and retailers use Consumer Decision Trees (CDTs) to map how shoppers make purchase decisions. While resource-intensive, they provide a strategic advantage by aligning shelves with shopper decision paths.
Milk – Example Consumer Decision Tree (Illustrative): Milk → Dairy / Plant-Based → Organic / Non-Organic → Added Benefit (Traditional, Grass-fed, A2, Lactose Free) / Fat Content (Whole, 2%, Skim) [Dairy] or Base Type (Almond, Oat, Soy) / Sugar Content (Unsweetened, Sweetened, Lightly Sweetened) [Plant-Based]
Measuring Productivity – What Is & Isn’t Working? Velocity (Sales / Distribution) reflects how efficiently shelf space converts to sales and helps flag high- and low-performing items. Velocity analysis segments items into quintiles (Q1 = highest, Q5 = lowest).
A space-to-sales analysis compares shelf share to sales share:
Identifying Incrementality – What’s Expanding The Category? Incrementality measures how a product adds value by attracting new shoppers, use cases, or needs rather than redistributing existing sales.
Velocity vs. Incrementality framework:
Bringing It All Together: Building A Winning Planogram Effective planograms combine shopper insights with data to optimize shelf performance. Velocity and space-to-sales ensure top items get the right space, while incrementality supports future growth by prioritizing products that attract new shoppers or occasions.
5. Pricing & Promotion Key Topics: Why Is Pricing Important? | Designing Profitable Promotions | Evaluating Success
Why Is Pricing Important? — Reaching The Shopper A category reset should start with the shopper, building a shelf that meets their needs through the right mix of price points, pack sizes, and “good, better, best” options, along with EDLP and Private Label considerations. Consumer panel data can help inform purchase behavior, demographics, and size preferences to guide pricing and promotion strategy.
Price is the #1 Factor of Importance When Grocery Shopping — 73% (Source: SPINS Value Conscious Consumer Survey, Suzy Academy, January 2026)
Designing Successful Promotions — The Why & How Behind Promotions Success depends on shopper response, with pricing and promo levers designed to drive desired outcomes such as trial, repeat purchase, incremental sales, store traffic, and loyalty.
Desired Promo Outcomes:
Key promo levers:
Promotion Strategy Matrix (Desired Outcome → Depth / Frequency / Timing):
| Desired Outcome | Depth | Frequency | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drive Trial | Features, Displays, or Deep Offers | Longer, More Frequent Windows Upon Release | Seasonal Periods; Shift Away From Competitor Timing |
| Increase Repeat Rates | Deep Offers Not As Necessary | Higher Frequency | Non-Seasonal Periods |
| Add Incremental Sales | Deeper Offers Degrade Incremental Units | More Frequently at Lower Discount, or Less at High Discount | Non-Seasonal Periods |
| Increase Foot Traffic | Features, Displays, or Deep Offers | More Frequent Offers Across Products | Short Term During Slow Periods |
| Build Loyalty | Mix of Depths | Avoid High Frequency (prevents training shoppers to buy only on discount) | Anchor Deeper Discounts While Competitors Are on Promo |
“We usually go in and try to have an idea of what [the retailer’s] levers are for successful promotion. I think it’s understanding all their programs, their pricing strategy and their promotional strategy – then building your brand’s plan around that to make sure you’re hitting all those key areas.” — Greg, Director of Retail Sales, Nielsen-Massey Vanillas
Evaluating Success — Understanding Key Metrics & Outcomes
Post-Event Analysis Framework:
| Effective Promos (driving sufficient lift) | Ineffective Promos (not driving enough lift) | |
|---|---|---|
| Good ROI | Maintain promo strategy for competitive advantage | Evaluate depth of discount |
| May outperform competition | Monitor other strategies using Competitor Promo Analysis | Consider additional placements, circular ads, e-commerce partnerships |
| Brand losing money | Evaluate depth of discount | Evaluate promo window & competitive promos |
6. Assortment Key Topics: The Process | Decision Making | Benefits Of Effective Assortment
The Assortment Process Assortment is the systematic evaluation of SKU mix and performance within a category to optimize sales, margin, inventory productivity, and shopper satisfaction by ensuring the right products are in the right stores and quantities.
Key components:
“It’s getting crowded, in terms of the number of SKUs. The section sizes are not increasing, but the assortment count is. You are fighting for space more so now than ever.” — Greg, Director of Retail Sales, Nielsen-Massey Vanillas
Assortment Decision Making
Common criteria for SKU rationalization:
New item selection criteria:
“We consider sales dollars, sales units and ranking among other items in the planogram/category. We also review the item and brand in SPINS & Nielsen to evaluate performance. We review if the brand is advertising with us and/or has a promo plan of action for the brand. We also consider if an item has a unique trait that would warrant keeping it despite lower sales.” — Category Manager at a Regional Grocer
Making Brands Stand Out SPINS ATTLAB highlights trending product attributes and what matters to shoppers. For example, in Wellness & Snack Bars, products with 10+ grams of protein are gaining share, signaling a clear opportunity for retailers.
Benefits Of Effective Assortment Retail operates on thin margins, fast turns, and limited shelf space — too much assortment adds complexity and cost, while too little risks lost sales.
7. Conclusion
Shopper First Winning starts with understanding and meeting evolving shopper needs across every touchpoint. Brands and retailers that align decisions to how shoppers browse, choose, and buy — across both physical and anywhere commerce — create more relevant, seamless experiences that drive conversion and loyalty.
Connected Execution Growth comes from aligning pricing, assortment, promotions, and shelf into one cohesive strategy. When these levers work together, they reinforce value, improve consistency, and eliminate friction, creating a stronger and more effective path to purchase.
Data-Driven Decisions Market intelligence turns data into clear, actionable direction. By combining sales, shopper, and competitive insights, brands and retailers can move beyond reactive decisions to proactively identify opportunities and respond with precision.
Balance Performance & Growth Top categories optimize for today while building for tomorrow. Focusing on productivity metrics like velocity and space efficiency ensures strong current performance, while prioritizing incrementality and innovation supports long-term category expansion.
Collaborative Advantage Strong retailer–brand alignment and continuous optimization drive sustained success. Shared goals, joint planning, and ongoing performance evaluation enable more effective execution, stronger partnerships, and better outcomes over time.
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