Consumer Durables

Consumer Durables

Advanced Pricing and Trade Promotion Management for Consumer Durables

With the downturn of 2008 consumers still needed to feed their families and keep them clean and healthy. So while new household budgets may have been met by using cheaper house brands, eating in more often and so forth, all consumers still had to spend on essentials, although many CPG companies were forced to extend their brand support to better cater for the changes.

Unfortunately though it's been a different story for the Durables sector. While consumer durables expenditure is a smaller portion of total consumer expenditure, many consumers whose budgets had been reduced have been able to put off new appliance, furniture and other consumer durable purchases.

This has meant those supplying this sector have had to re-examine many facets of their business, including their considerable trade spend (averaging 17% of revenue according to TPMA) and attempt to more closely manage these trade funds for maximum effectiveness. 

In addition, often forced to reduce administrative workforces, these companies have had to attempt to improve their efficiencies. Automating much of the drudgery involved in running rebates and other marketing and sales allowance programs has frequently been a key area for attention.

Furthermore, with frequent large pricing changes (particularly prevalent with consumer electronics), to maintain good customer relations it is necessary to have systems that minimise both incorrect pricing, and the subsequent efforts needed to rectify.

Success from solving the critical issues

Flintfox's modular solutions for the consumer durables sector allow for full or progressive improvements in trade spend management.

From complex and advanced pricing, to marketing and sales programs and allowances, and vendor trade management:

• All commitments made by way of billbacks, rebates and other retrospective based arrangements are automatically accrued for
• All trade promotional information is in a single repository, easily accessible by decision makers across the entire lifecycle
• This information is comprehensive, reliable, accurate and timely
• It is presented in a meaningful manner with the flexibility to accommodate frequent, ad hoc requests for information
• Planned promotional events are measured in terms of all associated costs and net margin contribution to accurately measure a return on trade investment