Asda Launching New Customer Insight Platform That Supports Evolution Of E-Commerce Category Management

Asda is preparing to launch a new customer insight and collaboration platform, created in partnership with eStoreBrands, an e-commerce data analytics specialist.

According to trade publication Retail Week, Asda Xpert will launch next week with the aim of helping the supermarket group and its suppliers “understand and more effectively meet the needs of its online shoppers”.

A source is quoted as saying that the new platform will provide brands with “advanced data-driven insights, enabling them to optimise product performance, track market trends, and make smarter category decisions for Asda.com”.

The new platform will also “integrate digital shelf analytics and real-time performance data” in order to help “suppliers drive mutual category growth and improve decision-making”.

It is claimed that Asda Xpert will be a major step forward in the “evolution of e-commerce category management” and will provide brands with the tools they need to “maximise growth, optimise strategies, and better serve customers in an increasingly competitive online retail space”.

Barney Burgess, Asda’s VP of Online, told Retail Week: “We’re really excited about this new partnership between Asda and eStoreBrands. Leveraging an e-category management approach, Asda Xpert will enable brands to identify new insights from our data, driving more informed actions which will accelerate growth for the brands as well as Asda.com”.

eStoreBrands’ VP of product strategy, Francis Nicholas, added: “Having spent years working for brands like P&G and Nomad Foods, I know first-hand how valuable this kind of insight is.

When working with retailer buying, category, and ecommerce teams, this was the type of solution which was missing. Partnering with Asda on Asda Xpert is incredibly exciting, and we look forward to supporting brands in making data-led decisions that benefit both suppliers and Asda.”

NamNews Implications:

• Asda are patently pressing all the right buttons.
• And innovating with leading-edge tools.
• The key issue remains that of sufficient EBITDA improvement…
• …fast enough to beat the clock.
• Fingers crossed.

Grocers as Media Outlets for CPGs Suppliers?

In culling times when retailers don’t need more categories, retailers are in danger of missing a unique opportunity to add media-access to their instore range.

Simply by putting their existing customer analytics and communications assets to work more effectively – and then marketing these assets to their suppliers – grocers have the ability to generate significant revenue for their business, while also helping to support their customers through each stage of their purchasing journey. See more at The Progressive Grocer.

Given their extensive range of communications channels, combined with physical access to the consumer in the shopper-marketing aisle, grocers are in a unique position to hand-hold the shopper throughout the entire purchasing process, and beyond...

However, David Buckingham in the Progressive Grocer makes the point that the opportunity will remain dormant unless retailers optimise their unique advantages over other media by tying suppliers’ marketing initiatives back to each stage of the shopper’s purchasing decision via the retailer’s customer analytics tools.

This will provide a means of directly measuring return on marketing investment, hopefully over-riding the distractions of back-to-front margin moves… 

By treating this ‘access and fulfilment bundle’ as an individual category and offering it as such to suppliers, the retailer can stimulate the collaboration necessary to raise its potential profile in both organisations.

It then simply takes communications-imagination on the part of supplier to add this new ‘category’ – a retailer’s unique channel, role and revenue stream - to their brand portfolio, and think accordingly…