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Category Management
Category Management offers a win-win solution for the operator, warehouse personnel, driver and consumer by ensuring higher location sales, reduced investment in inventory, and improved labor efficiency. Over time it has been proven that Category Management is not a mere buzz or fad. It has sustained the tests of time and has proved to have tangible and measurable benefits associated with its implementation - vend operators can expect to see sales grow by 2 to 10 % as a result of Category Management.
Much has been eulogized about Category Management but it still remains to be defined - what is Category Management? It is an objective method of choosing product menu for a machine by using sales data. It provides the vend operator a better handle on what sells and what does not. With a plethora of products made available in the market their task of making the right choices has become unmanageable. The Category Management plan-o-grams are based on the facts and figures instead of forcing the route drivers to use their judgement in choosing products. Category Management thus unleashes maximum profits for the vend operators and route drivers on one hand and provides greatest satisfaction to the consumers.
Category Management is a four-step process which involves:
- Category representation - have all product categories continuously available in every machine
- Space allocation - each category gets at least one facing and additional facings are assigned based on category sales volume
- Product selection - machine menu is customized to provide the best-selling items in order to meet the demands of the consumers most effectively and profitably
- Menu cycle rotation - ensure variety and eliminate complaints about restricted choice by changing the product selection on the menu between each menu cycle.
Product suppliers have realized the benefits and advantages of Category Management over the past several years in other channels. With those industry-wide benefits as motivation, several vend product suppliers are providing Category Management tools and applications free of charge to the vend operator in order to accelerate and proliferate Category Management's impact on the vending industry.
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 Year End 2007 Vending Data available February 2008.
Contact MSA now for year end data/reports.
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