2017: A year of political tweaking?

2017: a year for multi-tasking?

When Almost Right is not enough...

Is Amazon the answer?

Tesco continues to outpace rivals (Kantar)

However, behind the headlines:

Where at: Great to see Tesco on the way back, but digging beneath the surface, growth is in premium private label, echoing similar trends in other mults. Add the rapid growth of Aldi and Lidl, at the expense of brands, and a more worrying trend becomes more obvious…

Where headed: In other words, unless branded suppliers find ways into private label and into the discounters via ‘safe’ SKUs

Effect on you: Brands are under threat, or at the very least, the brand premium is being reduced

Action: Time for branded suppliers to decide whether keeping the factory going, or maintaining diminishing brand equity is more important

£2 = 1/2p, a Boots inflation-signal for 2017?

The new reality of print media at street level

                                                                                                                                  pic: Nei Valente
In 1950 there were more than 1,500 newsstands across New York City.

Today's numbers are closer to 300 units, with newspapers and magazines playing a secondary role to snacks…

See 30 pics here

Amazon Zaps the Checkout

In another first, Amazon Go have developed a new, more convenient way of shopping.

Users with the Amazon Go app on their phones simply check into a store equipped for the system, put their phones away, shop to their hearts' content, then leave when they're finished. No waiting to pay.

As each item is picked up and held (or stored in a bag) by the shopper, the price is automatically added to the shopper's Amazon account and is deducted from the user's bank account when he or she leaves the store. The store gets the same info plus a copy of the item's SKU number for inventory management and accounting purposes.

Whilst this will cut cost and no doubt increase their sales, the real impact of this lateral leap by Amazon Go will be felt at supermarket checkouts…

In other words, whilst traditional stores have laboured for years at speeding up the process, encouraging self-scanning, and in effect making the same hole deeper as in traditional thinking, Amazon have eliminated the process in a move that will of necessity be copied by the multiples, or for speed, will be leased from Amazon…