Research On The Application Of Category Management In Supermarket

Since it was initially proposed, category management has been gradually practiced for more than twenty years. In order to implement category management more effectively, a great number of international retail giants have spent many funds in developing suitable enterprise supply chain systems by combining with their own advantages. Enterprises improve the efficiency in product introduction, product combination, product promotion, product elimination and replenishment, and obtain strong market competitiveness through the system. A lot of foreign retail enterprises improve their management benefit through the implementation of effective category management. Many large-scale retail enterprises in China also gradually implement category management, and some small and medium-sized retail enterprises have preliminary understanding of category management, but the related notable achievement still have not been obtained. Retail enterprises and suppliers in China lack of communication and cooperation, so the retail enterprises generally only consider the development of their own enterprise, and worry that bad business competition caused by data sharing may affect their profits. Besides, there are fewer professional talents who can conduct detailed analysis of data in China at present.Although some suppliers have their detail category data of their products, they cannot effectively grasp the overall market. In fact, a variety of reasons cause the low category management level in domestic retail enterprises. Therefore, it is quite necessary to analyze the status quo of category management of retail enterprises in China.In the paper, retail enterprise A Company in the frontier city- Shenzhen city,Guangdong province is taken as an example. It is integrated private enterprise containing supermarkets, department stores and independent shops, with the size of sales reaching hundreds of millions of Yuan, so it has certain representativeness. With the supermarket of A Company(hereinafter referred to as A Company) as the researchkey, the analysis is conducted on the typical case. Through the related research methods, the paper expounds the current situation and problems of category management, and the management tactics in the future.Though the detailed investigation and study of the geographical position, product combination, product display, the overall layout of the store and computer information data of A Company, it is found that there are following problems: single sales data, single decision-making basis, the lack of category number in single item,the lack of data sharing with the suppliers, unsound internal assessment mechanism,and the lack of the analysis of the suppliers. As a result, A Company doesn’t have clear internal guest flow line, reasonable layout and display, and fails to stabilize the passenger flow, and complete the corporate performance for a long term. To solve these problems, it is vital to further implement category management in A Company.When further implementing category management, A Company faces the following obstacles: firstly, due to all aspects of the interest, it needs to coordinate from the higher level and try to minimize the impact on corporate profits. Secondly,category management is a relatively new concept for most company employees and a lot are still at a preliminary stage of the understanding. Thirdly, A Company has not formulated the category management training plan. Fourthly, only a small part of its annual budget and cost involves in the implementation of category management.According to the current state of A Company, it should follow the direction of the from easy to difficult aspects, first complete the early stages of category management and then identify category roles, initially establish the evaluation system suitable for its actual situation, and finally focus on category management tactics. Moreover, A Company should explore the category management process with the characteristic of the company from the category with qualities, upgrade the current computer information system, improve internal management, screen the suppliers with strong cooperation intention, strengthen communication, share data, establish supply chain relationships, develop towards intermediate category management, finally create win-win strategic partnership with suppliers and achieve the goal of senior categorymanagement.