Case Study: Leveraging Consumer Market Research to Build a Winning Retail Strategy

A large, global lighting brand built a strategy that improved consumer ring by 28% at a major home improvement retailer.

Executive Summary

Client Challenge

To win an all-or-nothing line review worth $325 million cost at a major home improvement retailer by leveraging market research to:

• Understand how consumers shop for light bulbs
• Understand how to target the product selection and planograms across geographies and consumer demographics
• Use insights to optimize the marketing mix to upsell consumers to higher value product offerings

Lighting Brand’s Solution

Developed an integrated marketing plan to increase conversion and upsell for the targeted consumers and contractors:

• Developed 200 new products to fill holes in the portfolio while rationalizing the existing product line
• Created 144 new lighting planograms customized by demographics and geographies to showcase the product portfolio
• Optimized pricing and created new merchandising, packaging and collateral materials to simplify the shopping experience and encourage upsell

Business Impact

• Lighting brand won the exclusive contract
• The home improvement retailer increased consumer ring by 28% and profitably increased share
• The lighting brand gained 5.3-dollar share points while significantly increasing profit margins

“Using market research to optimize the marketing mix, which simplified the shopping experience for the consumer, resulted in increased conversion and ring creating a win/win/win for us, the client and the end consumer.”

- Beth Somplatsky-Martori, Partner & CMO

Client Challenge

The home improvement retailer thought of reducing vendors via a line review as a cost reduction opportunity. The result typically was a lesser product offering for the consumer and a lower profit for the brand.

The lighting brand faced a strong competitive challenge to win the line review and a significant opportunity to reframe the portfolio as a win/win/win for consumers, the retailer and the company.

Solution

“The solution was to share extensive market research focused on the consumer. Using insights gleaned from the research, we created planograms tailored by geographic region and consumer demographic to simplify a very complex shopping experience. We did this by optimizing the product portfolio, packaging and merchandising by region and consumer demographic.”

“Once these ideas were shared with the client, it changed the whole conversation from a cost reduction opportunity to how we partner together to grow their business.”  Beth Somplatsky-Martori, Partner and CMO.

Impact on Client Business

The lighting brand won the exclusive contract. After the new product portfolio, planograms, packaging and merchandising were implemented the home improvement retailer increased consumer ring by 28% and the lighting brand gained 5.3-dollar share points while significantly increasing the profit margin.

The lighting brand won vendor of the year and the new planogram rollout became a "best practice" for the home improvement retailer’s vendor community.