Retail

Retailers need more than a good deal to make a sale and keep loyal customers coming back. A winning position requires superior strategy, attractive merchandising, efficient operations, targeted marketing, a robust organization, and reliable technology.

A global group of more than a hundred dedicated partners, our practice is the largest consumer and retail consultancy in the world. We work with the world’s top retailers across all areas of the retail value chain. Our consultants work in close partnership with client executives and pass on expertise by building skills and capabilities.

We help clients address pressing challenges. Examples include:

• Strategy

Laying the foundations for top-line growth through corporate strategy design, business development, acquisitions, and format renewal.

• Merchandizing

Creating a compelling commercial offer, including assortment management and pricing and promotions.

• Operations

Improving the bottom line through lean retailing, optimized sourcing, best practice supply chain management, and efficient store operations.

• Marketing

Creating tangible value for shoppers by optimizing the marketing mix based on a deep understanding of their needs and values.

• Organization

Getting ready for sustainable success by building robust organizations, superior skills, and smooth change management processes.

• Technology

Supporting the enterprise with reliable technology, ranging from systems architecture and application strategy to hardware sourcing and maintenance.

We have the flexibility and the expertise to create customized solutions for our retail clients, whatever their specific challenges may be.

To help clients stay at the leading edge, we have built advanced expertise and capabilities in the biggest opportunity areas in retail today. Current initiatives include:

• Digital and multichannel excellence

We partner with clients to embrace the opportunities afforded by new platforms, develop comprehensive multichannel strategies, and help them improve overall digital performance.

• Data analytics

We apply advanced analytics to help retailers identify data-driven improvement opportunities in all aspects of their commercial offer.

• Emerging markets

We scout global growth opportunities and develop strategies to help retailers meet the challenges of emerging markets.

In all of these areas, our teams call upon a global network of experts. We partner with leading external specialists, as needed, to provide world-class consulting support. We form performance partnerships with our clients to address issues holistically and create customized solutions that go beyond the obvious.

We help retailers across all elements of the marketing mix create tangible value for shoppers based on actionable insights into consumer needs.

In more than 400 marketing and sales studies conducted over the past five years, we have helped clients make sense of the data they possess, derive meaningful insights, and develop marketing strategies that create both tangible shopper value and sustainable retail growth.

We help clients develop specific marketing approaches to drive value in their regions, categories, formats, and competitive environments. Depending on the challenge, our support may include the following:

• Branding

We help develop relevant and distinctive brand strategies, for both store brands and private labels. Brands are retail’s most powerful connection points, creating lasting bonds with customers, employees, and investors and driving higher sales and more stable profits. According to recent LAZAR analysis, strong brands outperform their peers by about 5 percentage points in terms of total return to shareholders over a 7-year period.

• Customer lifetime value (CLV) management

We help clients retain customers and boost their value over time. Active CLV management unlocks each customer’s full potential—through efficient acquisition, targeted upselling campaigns, and value-based loyalty reward programs.

• Digital excellence

We help clients understand the mindset and the behavior of today’s digital natives and carefully weigh potential changes to the marketing mix. We have the experience and the tools to help attain online marketing excellence, make the most of social media platforms, and actively manage digital ROI.

• Customer insights

We help clients apply needs-based research and segmentation techniques that get to the real drivers of shopper behavior and identify the most promising target groups. Our experts work with client data to move from data mining to actionable insight.

• Capability building

Our marketing consultants draw upon a range of enabling tools and training programs to help retailers bring out the best in their in-house marketing teams. We apply diagnostic tools for assessing retail marketing capability and conduct hands-on workshops covering topics such online retail and relationship management. We work with our clients to design marketing organizations and processes that support business objectives.

We work with clients to sharpen the commercial offer through value-based pricing and promotions, the right assortment, and superior supplier management.

Pricing and promotions determine whether customers believe a retailer provides good value for money. Based on the assortment they find in stores, shoppers form opinions on whether they have sufficient and relevant choices. And partnerships with suppliers of branded goods as well as private-label products have a direct impact on a retailer’s growth and bottom line.

We have applied and refined our merchandizing expertise across a wide array of retail sectors and product categories, including:

• Food

We help food retailers identify and implement best-practice approaches in all relevant areas of the commercial offer, including category strategy, pricing, promotions, and supplier partnerships.

• Non food

We have developed proven, sector-specific merchandizing approaches in consumer electronics, DIY, and apparel.

• Fresh

Short product shelf life makes fresh-food retailing a particularly challenging category. We help clients boost performance, supporting commercial and operational improvements across the fresh-food value chain.

Many of our merchandizing projects draw upon the Commercial Strategic Intelligence Tool, developed to manage investment trade-off decisions across all commercial and marketing levers.

We help boost operational excellence in stores and across the retail supply chain.

Superior strategy depends on reliable, efficient fulfillment. To achieve sustainable success, retailers must keep the promises they make to their customers day in and day out. At the same time, retailers need to keep a close watch on operational costs to protect their profits.

We work with retailers to achieve operational excellence. Typically, our consultants focus on:

• Lean retail

Focuses on improving efficiency and reducing waste in all in-store processes. We help clients roll out strategic changes to the frontline to improve processes, including technology-enabled solutions.

• Frontline operations

Helps retailers improve customer service in stores, drive transactions and basket sizes, attract and retain highly engaged employees, and improve leadership from store and field managers

• Retail supply chain management

Improves the flow of goods from the supplier to the shelf through better planning and implementation. Improvements raise service levels, cut costs, and optimize inventory management.

• Sourcing optimization

Helps retailers refine their provider portfolio, including branded goods, private labels, and indirect purchasing through third parties. We work with clients to streamline ordering processes, bundle for volume, and renegotiate contracts and conditions.

• Multichannel and online operations

Creates a compelling customer experience across channels without compromising on operational efficiency. We help clients manage the cost of multichannel order fulfillment to ensure profitability.

• Retail real estate

Helps retailers optimize their network and become leaner in how they plan and execute construction. Our experts also work with client teams to optimize real estate management processes.

We also work with clients on all purchasing-related issues, including supplier selection and partnerships

We help retailers meet organizational challenges across markets, channels, and formats, developing robust structures and building capabilities.

Driven by competition and consolidation, large, complex retail enterprises operate across countries, channels, categories, and formats. While size and scope afford economies of scale, they also present considerable structural challenges.

We work with retailers to manage organizational complexity and design robust organizations that fit their specific needs. Our experts bring deep retail knowledge and our latest thinking on organizational health and performance.

Our teams engage with retailers and retail holding companies on a wide variety of organizational topics:

• Organization design

Focusing on category management, supply chain, private label, e-commerce, and property management, we help retailers build robust structures that support their businesses.

• Retail leadership development

From aligning the top team to building capabilities throughout the organization, we help identify and develop leadership talent.

• Operational change management

By embedding new structures and processes in areas from commercial management to in-store operations, we help our clients make smooth transitions and ensure that new ways of working stick.

As new commercial opportunities and challenges develop, organizational requirements often evolve. We work closely with clients to anticipate changes and benefit from the competitive advantages of a strong organizational foundation.

We work with clients to achieve sustainable performance gains by expanding markets, improving formats, building partnerships, and ensuring capital productivity.

Retail has long been a game of testing and learning: trying different things, finding out what works, and doing more of it. But as the industry matures, disciplined mid- and long-term strategic planning and focused execution are becoming indispensable for sustainable performance.

Our teams support clients in strategic retail value creation. Depending on the challenge, solutions may include the following:

• Growth and international expansion

We work with retailers to identify pockets of future growth—in new categories, new target groups, or new regional markets. This often requires adapting business models, value propositions, and format strategies to the dynamics of emerging local markets.

• Format excellence

Active management of the store portfolio requires trade-off decisions: which stores should be upgraded? Should new stores be opened? Which existing stores should be closed? We help retailers allocate their overall investments while also identifying the right format, layout, assortment, and positioning for existing and new stores.

• Corporate finance

In a consolidating industry, we work with retailers and holding companies to optimize their portfolio through mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. We help our clients increase overall returns through active capital productivity and cost management, and we offer advanced retail risk management tools.

• Partnership models

We help retailers weigh the pros and cons of developing franchises and other partnership models. We support them in end-to-end design, including concept, operating system, franchisee/partner support, quality management, and incentive schemes with an eye to the organizational structures and skills needed for an effective partnership.

Drawing on the experience of our business technology consultants, we bring world-class technological expertise to retail clients.

Technology is transforming the way leading retailers run their businesses. We work with retailers to identify and implement effective and robust solutions. Our work often covers topics such as:

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

We help retailers manage the challenges associated with ERP and the implementation and transformation of related systems.

• Technology in supply chain

In cooperation with our Operations Practice, we help retailers select and implement the optimal supply chain solutions for their business needs.

• Innovation in technology

We scout the market for new trends and innovations in retail technology, and we provide criteria to help retailers prioritize their investments.

• Multichannel technology

Catering to customers across multiple touch points and distribution channels requires a dependable back end. We help clients map out the IT solution space for online and multichannel retail.  more

We update our skills and our expert networks to help clients stay at the cutting edge of retail technology.