There are already several decades have implemented strategies Category Management (Category Management) as a technique to help both retailers, and their suppliers to establish marketing strategies in the sales floor. But let's see what this term means exactly:

System according to ECR (Efficient Consumer Response for its acronym in English), The Category Management is a joint process between suppliers and distributors, in which a category is managed as strategic business unit in order to increase sales or turnover and profit through increased customer satisfaction (ECR, 2010). The interesting thing about this process, is that part of putting in the center of the discussion to the buyer and their behavior in the sales floor.

This section will highlight the project implemented in Europe for three pharmacies Medicon Pharmacy Group (Medicon), pharmaceuticals retailer in Germany, in which it proposed better target customers at the pharmacy, through the reorganization of products in categories. The strategy was then focus on what the patient or client is looking, and thereby display articles that the potential buyer can associate, thus improving, their buying process.

Category Management was implemented on three pharmacies 2010. A key part of this was the collaboration with GS1 Germany and Klosterfrau, pharmaceuticals provider, as well as the support of the Ministry of Economy to technology implementations. The base infrastructure was left by the systematic analysis of market information and scanned at points of sale. GS1 supported the company to deploy and enable exchange of electronic documents with its suppliers (EDI – Electronic Data Interchange), such as sales reports and thereby mitigate possible human errors, streamlining the flow of information.

In less than six months they managed to implement the process of Category Management, obtaining negligible benefits, such as: an increase in sales of a 8.5%, even though the national flag in the German market was declining, a 0.3% in the last quarter of 2010. On the other hand, these pharmacies increased their customers in a 12.6%, highlighting a couple of them with increased customer loyalty programs 18.5% and the other of a 71.9% (GS1, 2012).

Finally it is important not to mention that in Mexico the industry and trade agreement that share consumer information and the use of existing information, will be key to the success of Category Management Strategies (GS1 Mexico, 2011).

Sources of interest

• ECR, G. I. (2010). CATEGORY MANAGEMENT The operational model for the Italian System. GS1 Italy. Retrieved from http://ecr-all.org/files/Indicod_brochure_category_def.pdf?register=yes
• GS1 (2012). GS1 Healthcare Reference Book 2012/2013. Brussels: GS1.
• GS1 Mexico (2011). 1er Category Management Study in Mexico. Mexico, DF: Category Ideas, Biology.

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If your company has implementations made on these issues or are interested in promoting projects related to standards or cases mentioned, contact Carlos Ramos, Manager of Research and Innovation GS1 Mexico (cramos@gs1mexico.org)

The content of this document is a compilation of information of interest within the Community of GS1 and technological trends globally. In all cases referred to the information source.