Progressive Grocer

Green, or natural, cleaners have always sounded like a good idea, but in the past, American consumers were skeptical of product performance and daunted by high prices compared with traditional cleaners. Today, the playing field is growing greener with...

The personal care category is uniquely intimate, and consumer motivations for product adoption primarily involve personal health-and-wellness needs, with external, “greater good” sustainability considerations being Secondary. As is the case in the food and beverage categories, assessment...

The traditionally perceived role of packaging as being a medium to withstand storage and distribution challenges has come a long way globally in the last three decades. In case of food and beverages, packaging plays a very important...

They sell a lot of beer at the Central Market in Shoreline, Wash., an independently operated 80,000-squarefoot supermarket that carries 450 items in 48 feet of beer cooler space and a big promo island. But only...

The Director General of Paris-based OIV, Dr. Federico Castellucci, recently announced to a group of international journalists in Verona that India had applied for the membership of the august body. This is one of the highlights in the development...

Although there are glimmers of hope on the horizon, we’re not out of the woods yet, economically speaking. Even more important than what’s actually occurring is consumers’ perception of it – and as far as many are concerned, times...

As the Indian retail sector expands, and retailers aim for international standards and best practices, a number of store designers and furniture manufacturers, among others, from across the world are making a beeline for India. One such company that...

Honda could make a place in the Indian two-wheeler market, because it understood the pulse of the country, and not because it could make ‘powerful’ bikes. But it seems what Honda learnt way back about the mindset of Indian...

Milk and cookies. Bacon and eggs. Ice cream and cake. These are all classic pairings that present ideal scenarios for cross-merchandising. They’re also all far enough apart in the store that bringing them together requires a bit of merchandising...

Reflecting on the supermarket business today, you may think of the oft-quoted line from Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In response to the current economic climate,...

As shoppers make haste to complete their trip through the grocery store, savvy retailers are increasingly using portable merchandising equipment to place an assortment of hot and refrigerated food products and promotions in their paths to increase the incidence...

The temptation is to associate the effects of the U.S. economic situation – and the subsequent lack of shoppers in stores – with the recent financial death spiral of brands and retailers. In retail, the logic has been to...

At a recent seminar I attended on “The Future of Marketing,” much of the conversation concerned how e-mail was going to “destroy” direct mail, how the Internet is “killing off ” television and other such parallel arguments. As I...

No longer focused so heavily on the “why” of cross-channel – it appears that message has been received – we look much closer at the “how”: the tactics and priorities that retailers have on their plates as they attempt...