What is Category Management?
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009What is a ‘Category Development Professional’?
‘Category Managers’ and ‘National Account Salespeople’, as well as other related roles, are professionals who use ‘category management’ methods and data to increase sales.
Every ‘category’ (product or group of products like ‘beverage’ or ‘pet food’ or ‘OTC/over-the-counter drugs’) is closely tracked for sales history using scan data from the retail check-out counter, which is combined with the manufacturer’s internal historical sales data, data reflecting total category sales (purchased from third party vendors), and other qualitative data (consumer surveys, etc). The analysis of this data results in a recommended assortment of products for the store shelf in each category, and this exercise is referred to as ‘category management’.
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