If I were a consumer products goods (CPG) marketer, I’d probably be very frustrated. So little reliable, accurate, and timely data about customers, prospects, and the market to deal with.
Because so many CPG firms sell through intermediaries like supermarkets and other retailers and merchants, it’s difficult for them to know a lot about their customers, not to mention the broader market, in general.
In an ideal world, CPG marketers would be able to segment consumers into 9 buckets, based on two dimensions: 1) Frequency of product purchase, and2) Frequency of product purchase from my firm. The segmentation would look like the following:
CPG marketers have little insight into any of the buckets in this segmentation approach. Without the data, they have little view into how big their marketing opportunity is or how loyal their customers truly are.
Many CPG firms have created loyalty programs that have helped to deceive them into thinking they know who their loyal customers are. But let me ask you this: If a customer, let’s call him George, buys one box of cereal a month, and always buys it from you, you would consider George a good, loyal customer right?
Sure. But let’s say there’s another customer — Jerry — who buys six boxes of cereal a month, but only one of those boxes is from you. Which is the better customer?