Research On The Optimization Of Chocolate Category Shopper Marketing Strategy For Mars China

This article introduces background of a fast growing food category,Chocolate.And it does a detailed analysis on the growth drivers,category penetration.Urbanization,household income increase,and sales force expansion are bringing the category distributing to lower tier cities and becoming daily consumption food in every Chinese family.Besides festivals,gifting occasions,chocolate has more and more consumption moments.The category penetration is growing fast to be a full year activated food of consumer.The study is to optimize the in-store marketing strategies and category penetration development model.It helps Mars as the leading Chocolate supplier to enhance its fast growing position and to drive the whole category growth.Through the marketing philosophy of the Mars Company,the Law of Growth,comprehensive undserstanding of the category penetration barriers&drivers had been discovered and developed in the paper.Based on the insights of those barriers,some current purchasing barriers had been studied,e.g.limited category shelf space,lack of in store visibility,over seasonality of sales,cooperation problems with key accounts,etc.Referred by practices of modern trade marketing,integrated shopper insighs and brand strategies,in-store merchandising solutions and marketing programs had been planned,designed and executed to drive the category.Proven business results showed the effectiveness of those practices.Some actions to ensure the execution of in store strategies have been proposed in the paper.The optimization of Mars Chocolate shopper marketing strategies are recommended:1.To set up and continuous optimize in-store execution standards across channel to guide field sales;2.To drive innovation of main shelf solutions to improve traffic and impulse purchase;3.To prove multi-site and Check-out merchandising solutions;4.To execute de-seasonal marketing programs;5.To enhance customer marketing programs to support the key accounts category captaincy.Through these strategies,Mars Chocolate could strong then its brands and sales competitive advantages,continuously accelerate the category growth.