Category Management plays a central role in reaching the primary aim of ECR which is to create the prerequisites and techniques for a cooperation between commerce and industry for a better fulfillment of the customer needs.

Category Management tries to fulfill the customer requests by providing the right article with the right price in the right quantity at the right place. First all articles will be assigned to categories, e.g. "instant meals". So-called Category Managers decide about all articles of a category as a strategic business unit instead of a concentration of individual products. Instead of regarding only purchase prices, the buyers use their information about their customers‘ purchase attitudes and use EDI technologies to achieve the biggest savings with the top-selling products of each category.

Category Management changes the relationship between industry and commerce. The traditional annual meetings between purchasing department and sales department can be held more rational and factual. The optimization of sortiments with a view of the customer needs improves not only the purchase attitudes but also reduces the costs on both sides – for supplier and trader.

We help you with

• the definition of categories,
• the analysis of categories,
• the analysis of customers and market,
• the definition of target groups and sortiments,
• the definition of category aims and the determination of a strategy,
• the determination of a budget,
• the planning and realization of steps and
• the assessment of results

and together with our partners take care that Category Management will be a success for your company.

Any questions? Please use our extensive ECR glossary for further information or contact us by e-mail.