case study

Hyper-Local Competitive Data Powers Trade Spend Optimization

The Client

World-Leading Beverage Manufacturer

The Situation

This Beverage manufacturer entered an agreement with a wholesale partner stipulating that the manufacturer's brand would not be promoted at the wholesaler's competitor stores, located within a 20 mile radius of its own stores, for more than an 10 week period. The partnering wholesaler requires this to uphold its low-price commitment to its members. It was soon determined by this wholesale partner that a promotion from a competing store within the 20 mile radius had been running a promotion for more than 10 weeks, violating the agreement. As a result, they requested considerable trade spend dollars from the manufacturer.

Market Conditions

This leading beverage manufacturer, like many CPGs, enter into promotional agreements with retail and wholesale partners in order to be competitive. Often times, there are specific location, time-frame, and price-based criteria involved to help ensure that retailers can compete with other stores. When a violation occurs - which is not an infrequent event - trade spend dollars are often requested by retailers as compensation.

Key Challenge

The observation of the agreement's violation originated from the wholesaler. Often times, wholesalers have access to higher quality data than their CPG partners, giving them the upper-hand in many situations involving trade spend. Without real-time, hyper-local competitive data, CPGs like this beverage manufacturer can have trouble monitoring the necessary metrics for their trade agreements, and cannot effectively refute agreement violation claims.

Solution

Using Datasembly's hyper-local capabilities, this beverage manufacturer was able to obtain data on their products at the wholesaler's competitor stores within the agreed-upon 20 mile radius of their own stores. Then, using Datasembly's real-time data, they were able to identify the time frames of the competitors' promotions that triggered the violation claim. They were able to determine that no stores within the target areas ran promotions for longer than the agreed-upon 10 week period, and successfully refuted the claim on their trade spend dollars.

AHA! Insight

Datasembly’s real-time hyper-local data allowed this beverage manufacturer to hone in on the exact criteria specified in their trade agreement. When confronted about a violation, they were able to prove to their wholesale partner that no rules were broken, saving them a large portion of their trade spend budget.

Datasembly app image showcasing retail data collection