Strategic Advisory Services
Strategic Advisory Services
For more than a decade, Kantar Retail's Strategic Advisory Services practice has been delivering customized research, advisory services, and strategy due diligence for clients around the globe. We synthesize retail growth forecasts, shopper trends, and retailer insights to help answer business questions and build practical, measurable action plans. Our predictive tools, training curriculum, and planning frameworks are often co-developed with clients, ensuring relevancy and alignment with your "retail reality."
Our solutions typically serve three client needs - education and internal alignment, ongoing advisory support, and strategy refinement. Our offer provides strategy support (new market entry or eCommerce capability
development), predictive planning tools and frameworks (global market evolution/eCommerce modeling), and executional support (best practices in retail execution, seasonal merchandising analysis).
Our practice connects clients with data-driven analysis and seasoned experts across the Kantar or WPP global network, working wherever clients need us - Shanghai, Sao Paolo, Toronto, Bentonville, Cape Town, or Central London.
Representative solutions include global market evolution and clustering, channel or retailer growth cut by country or city, consumer and shopper megatrends analysis, eCommerce capability development, and more.
Mapping Whitespace/New Market Opportunity
Key Client Questions:
- How can we educate and motivate our internal teams to become proactive in finding new growth?
- How can we inform our executive leadership to stay ahead of the curve?
- How can we link new growth opportunities to our planning assumptions?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We help clients organize and position for growth in new or quickly evolving uncharted territory (e.g., online/digital, small box formats, value discounters, specialty beauty, other). Our solutions provide relevant insight and forward views on where to play, how to win, partnership assessment, investment prioritization — and why. Our clients use our work to galvanize support for a new strategy or communicate a new strategic direction.
Alternative Channel Strategic Research & Advisory Support
Key Client Questions:
- How can we assess true profitability across alt-channels?
- How do we engage cross-functional teams to customize beyond special packs?
- How can we localize effectively and efficiently?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We work collaboratively with clients to identify and map new growth opportunities (often in "uncomfortable" formats or emerging channels), advise on how best to align internally to meet customization requirements, and guide on partnership opportunities to grow profitably with key accounts in high-growth channels.
Global Market Evolution: Aligning for Growth & New Capabilities Development
Key Client Questions:
- How can we predict key 'tipping points' in rapidly developing retail ecosystems?
- How do we plan for growth 3-5 and 5-10 years out?
- How can we develop relevant capabilities for vast, multi-trade-zone countries like China or Brazil?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We bring a robust, data-driven approach and road-tested toolkit to expedite new market assessments and future growth mapping. Our frameworks help identify market development tipping points, format evolution, and growth rates. They also help you plot and plan capabilities to anticipate retailer demands as modern trade proliferates--considering channel and format evolution 3, 5, and 10 years out.
eCommerce Strategy Formation, Positioning to Win Across the Path to Purchase
Key Client Questions:
- How do we organize for success in an omnichannel world?
- What eCommerce models will win long term?
- What are best-in-class companies doing to ramp up their talent, tools, and thought leadership?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
Our subject matter experts (SMEs) provide a range of solutions to help clients educate, inform, and catalyze support to drive new eCommerce/Digital strategies. SMEs and consultants from across the globe study newly evolving or hybrid eCommerce models (click & collect), helping clients track what retailers are likely to pilot across mature markets. We also help inform or retool an existing strategy, bringing a holistic approach to understanding the drivers of eCommerce — integrating size of prize work with customer planning and capabilities development. Clients also leverage our flexible "Access the Experts" advisory services program, complemented by research-project support.
Representative solutions include new channel strategies, urbanization/small format growth, retailer capability scorecarding, customer segmentation and dynamic clustering, and more.
Annual Planning: Strategic and Tactical Support
Key Client Questions:
- How do we build fact-based scenario plans for all tier 1 customers?
- How can we get our cross-functional teams to apply thought leadership to customer selling stories?
- How can we better prepare for collaborative planning and JBP?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We can guide on key implications for macro-retail landscape trends, sense check or validate your year-on-year growth assumptions, or forecasts by channel and retailer (at format and banner level). Our annual planning solutions also include related top-to-top prep, and customized retailer "deep dive" inputs (format and banner level) and strategy alignment due diligence for joint business planning (JBP) prep.
Long-Range Planning: Aligning for Mutual Growth - 3-10 Year View
Key Client Questions:
- How can we better understand where retail is going, how it's evolving, and at what speed?
- How can we lay out a long-term strategy that incorporates predictive insights (format evolution), channel and retailer growth rates, and shopper trends?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We can build global or country-level industry outlooks, map consumer and shopper mega-trends, provide implications looking 3, 5, 10 years out. Our teams can advise on strategy improvements or full-on renovations.
Planning Tools & Partnership Capabilities Development
Key Client Questions:
- How do we know what "best in class" looks like at our tier 1 and tier 2 retailers?
- How can we develop best practice approaches to cross-functional planning?
- What skills and tools do we need to build today to win tomorrow?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We help build, deploy, and train sales and customer support functions with predictive planning tools and templates, advisory support to guide new partnership development, and cross-functional teamwork, skills development, and ad hoc coaching/embedding.
Retailer Segmentation & Dynamic Clustering
Key Client Questions:
- How can we develop an objective, fact-based, and neutral tiering system?
- How can we partner to grow faster than the overall market?
- How can we cluster regional customers to reach "national scale" support levels?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We help clients develop a roadmap to meet future growth objectives using a multi-variate, qualitative and quantitative approach. Our experts facilitate cross-functional team evaluation exercises, retailer scorecarding, and scenario planning tools and application workshops--identifying where to play, and how to win, short and longer term. Clients benefit from KR's objectivity and deep customer understanding as well as practical recommendations guiding resource allocation/trade spend, org structures, and account management decision-making.
Representative solutions include annual planning due diligence, retailer execution best practices/benchmarking, seasonal merchandising/marketing best practices, inputs/prep for joint business planning (JBP) via customer deep dive/jump start workshops, and more. Our bespoke capability embedding programs bring our experts to your teams via workshops, in-store innovation audits, or cross-functional retail immersion "bootcamp" sessions. All of these solutions aim to elevate your starting point, taking a "raise all boats" cross-functional approach to improved execution enabled by better informed and aligned teams.
Retail Execution Best Practices and Peer Benchmarking
Key Client Questions:
- How can we learn from what suppliers are executing well at retail?
- What processes are working best to improve success rates for new item launch?
- Where can we find the best innovation across the store floor or online?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
We can provide a cross-channel assessment of retail execution best practices, answering the following: Who's doing the best omnichannel marketing? Where can we find the best in-store activation? Which categories are growing through merchandising innovation? What could we reapply to our own categories and customers?
We are also asked to conduct qualitative supplier benchmarking to uncover best practice approaches (omnichannel planning), innovative processes (new-item launch), org-structure development (shopper marketing or eCommerce). Such benchmarking often includes KR's recommendations. New approaches can be introduced or reinforced through facilitated workshops, national sales meeting (NSM) training, or short term/ad hoc team coaching.
Seasonal Insights & Analysis - Aligning for Future Success
Key Client Questions:
- What's working best in seasonal marketing and merchandising programs?
- What's working best to convert shoppers during Back to School or Holiday?
- Where are shoppers seeking "want" vs. "need" items?
Kantar Retail Solutions:
Seasonal Merchandising & Marketing Assessment Programs offer research and advisory support to retailers and suppliers as they prepare for the Q4 holiday or spring/summer seasonal sets, evaluate the effectiveness of merchandising and marketing tactics, and set future expectations based on key learnings from the past. KR experts provide ongoing streaming of insights to adjust/validate holiday strategy and win throughout holiday seasons by (a) keeping abreast of underlying macro conditions, (b) anticipating seasonal/holiday shopper spending intentions, and (c) getting in front of key retailer initiatives and in-store activation trends. Seasonal programs are flexible in design, and customized to your business—e.g., key customers (for suppliers), key competitors (for retailers), and select product categories (taking a shopper view) to optimize the effectiveness of your brand/category's in-store activation--and plan ahead for next year's investments.
