Raise your hand if you’ve been asked to “Like”, “Follow”, “Tag” or some other social media direction in the past 24 hours? Most of us have. Everywhere you look more and more retailers and brands are jumping on the digital marketing bandwagon but retailers and manufacturers are not keeping up at the same pace.
When it comes to trade promotion marketing, manufacturers are slower to adapt than their retailer trading partners to the digital options that are available, show the findings of Kantar Retail’s 2016 Trade Promotion Study, Confronting Trade Promotion Fragmentation — Exceptional Agility Required.
According to the study, as trade promotion activity and spending migrate to digital, just 14% of manufacturers have separate brick-and-mortar and e-commerce budgets, and 24% have no e-commerce budget at all. One in three retailers (33%), meanwhile, have a dedicated e-commerce budgets with just 8% having no e-commerce budget.
“The proliferation of digital options for directly engaging with shoppers has significantly fragmented the trade promotion market,” says Brad Golden, VP of consulting for Kantar Retail. “Manufacturers must act with exceptional agility to keep pace and optimize spending. Right now, retailers are demonstrating considerably more agility than suppliers. As a result, we are seeing considerable misalignment between the two.”
