Planning aggressive and defensive sales strategies

Vijay Sales is one of the biggest retailer of Technical Consumer Goods in India. In addition to working with major global and local brands, Vijay Sales manufactures and sells own-label products. In this huge and complex market, players must compete effectively at city, state and sector levels to succeed. Access to GfK’s reliable up-to-date sales intelligence, and own benchmark performance is a vital component of Vijay Sales’ marketing and sales activity. In addition to informing planning at every level, it also feeds into the retailer’s negotiations with brands.

Vijay Sales operates in a fast-moving and highly competitive environment and the sales and marketing teams use the sell-out data to plan their activities for the next month. Overall market results are analyzed alongside segment-level detail to create, execute, evaluate and adjust plans that will have the maximum chance of achieving goals. The monthly intelligence is widely used by the category teams to make decisions on product and pricing strategy. SWOT analyses are used to compare Vijay Sales’ own performance, and to identify opportunities to drive demand, improve tactics, address weaknesses and tackle threats. This includes focused, localized activities such as creating promotions to drive footfall in specific cities.

The month-on-month metrics provide insight into market gaps that can be filled with Vijay Sales’ own- brand products and this forms a vital part of its own product development, launch and pricing game plan. This continual vigilance ensures that company is able to lead rather than follow markets, keeping it one step ahead of a challenging market. As well as incorporating intelligence into day-to-day planning, Vijay Sales uses trend data to feed into annual planning. For example, in setting yearly sales targets by city and segment based on the anticipated scale of the opportunity.

There are many festivals and special events in India, and these are key moments in Vijay Sales’ promotional calendar where monthly sales intelligence is invaluable. From nationwide occasions like Republic Day, Independence Day, New Year Sales to Back-to-School campaigns and other regional festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi, Dusshera, Diwali etc, the retailer uses each as a chance to drive volume and generate maximum value.

The two companies work closely together, meeting at least quarterly to review areas of focus and emerging trends. As well as identifying opportunities in the monthly sell-out dataset, GfK’s team also provides ad hoc analysis to help Vijay Sales visualize where they can gain share, generate profit margin and compete more effectively.