Asking shoppers what they want is still the best way to capture insight
We unpick some of the biggest trends in retail and how it’s affecting lubricants in the automotive and car maintenance categories…
Retail Macro trends and what it means for automotive lubricants
The shape of the European retail industry has changed radically in the last few years. The high-street has always been prone to uncertainty – seasonality and consumer confidence – but in recent years, the onslaught of disruption really has become relentless. The automotive category is of course prone to the same trends that affect most categories…
Consumers have never had so much information freely available and in the palm of their hands about product specifications, features, benefits and of course – prices. The ability to distil that information down into a ‘deliverable within 24 hours’ purchase-decision was unimaginable to most just a few years ago – now it’s the norm.
And it’s not just consumer access to information that retailers need to contend with: speed-to-market, fast-fashion and increased personalisation all affect consumer expectations - across all categories. The consumers’ vehicle might only be 6 months old and with the latest generation engine oil, but the consumer expects availability from the start. “You can only get that from the main dealer”just isn’t a sufficient answer for most consumers nowadays. If you’re positioned as a leading retailer, then that’s the expectation of the consumer for all the categories you serve. Theshopper experience may have been digitised, compared, and costed but it’s got to beavailablefor the consumer to have a chance of buying it.
So what can Category Managers do to ensure their automotive categories, and in particular the lubricants offer, keeps up-to-speed with the evolving landscape and consumer needs?
Know Your Customer
Absolutely the most critical thing to do is know your customerand then put their needs first. In a recent shopper study with a leading British retailer, we realised that one segment of customers found the in-store experience to be hugely inconvenient – not because the retailer was doing a bad job but because for that profile of shopper, the need for the purchase experience in itself was seen purely as a necessity, driven by the need to ‘top-up’their oil. The insight allowed us to work with the retailer and model a shopping experience that prioritised convenience and simplicity.
In another study with a Scandinavian retailer, we got more understanding around the shoppers’ needs for complete peace-of-mind when it came to oil selection, particularly for winter motoring, where good vehicle maintenance can be a matter of life and death! To reallysatisfy customers around product selection and peace-of-mind, different techniques were required to optimise the brand selection process.
Product Roadmaps
A limited range of products that vary little year-on-year, or only when a competitor approaches you about a slightly differentiated offer from your incumbent’s never was – and certainly isn’t now – a good way to manage categories!
Whilst the retail sector might have become more changeable and more disrupted, the automotive sector has actually become more mature, structured and in some ways, more predictable. There is a huge wealth of market data available in terms of vehicle parc, engine requirements and specifications. This offers those retailing lubricants a stable platform from which to establish really robust, medium-term product roadmap plans to keep their categories up-to-date with the latest technologies.
Brand Architecture
At a time when consumers anticipate wider availability, retailers have come to realise thatthere is such a thing as too muchchoice. Whilst online stores might help overcome ‘warehouses with walls’ and ‘limited shelf space’ arguments from Category Managers, retailers are realising that offering consumers everything– and everything without differentiation from their competitors – can have its limitations.
A well-structured category, offering clear price and quality differentiation is still the best way to help organise shopper’s thoughts and provide solutions to their needs. More than ever, it’s important to have a really clear vision of what roleeach brand in the category is there to do – if a brand isn’t adding value in the category, it doesn’t deserve to be there. This is increasingly true of the ‘private label’ sector. Talking of which these are most often now no longer private labels, in fact they increasingly fulfil the role of ‘exclusive brand’ – a very different role from the previous ‘private label’ position.
Moove Pro-Brands has a wealth of experience helping its retail and trade distributor automotive customers plan their lubricants categories. If you’ve got an automotive category and would like help developing your insights and plans, talk to the Moove Pro-Brands team.