Sales and marketing strategy for consumer packaged goods
Category, pricing and portfolio decisions, built to hold up at the retailer.
Edgewood Consulting Group is a strategy and analytics consultancy for manufacturers of consumer packaged goods. We research how shoppers choose, turn that into recommendations a buyer will accept as objective, and work alongside your teams until the decision is on the shelf.
Services
Six lines of work, one standard: the answer has to lead to an action.
Each service is scoped to a real decision your team has to make and a real conversation in which it has to be defended. We do not produce analysis for its own sake.
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01
Assortment optimization
AssortmentEdge® evaluates an assortment retailer by retailer, matched to that retailer's planogram, and quantifies how demand moves when items are added, removed or given more space. The output is an item-level recommendation the buyer can act on.
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02
Retail buyer interviews
Trade Probes are structured conversations with senior buyers and category managers at the major chains. You learn how the retailer sees your category, your competitors and your plans, reported back with implications and recommended actions.
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03
Net revenue management
RevenueEdge™ simulates the whole market for a category and ties every launch, delisting or portfolio change to units and margin, so finance, sales and marketing can decide from one model instead of three spreadsheets.
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04
Shopper decision research
Shopper Decision Hierarchy studies map how people choose within a category: what they consider, what they substitute, and when they leave the store empty-handed. This research underpins our assortment and portfolio work.
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05
Pricing and trade promotion
Price-pack architecture, elasticity and promotion analysis that tell you which price moves and which events return their cost, in a form you can take into a retailer negotiation.
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06
Category thought leadership
A category platform that gives your organization a point of view retailers want to hear, and that carries through selling materials, category reviews and the onboarding of new sales teams and brokers.
Our approach
Insights, innovation, implementation.
The three stages are handled by the same consultants, so the reasoning behind a recommendation is still in the room when it is presented to the retailer.
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Insights
We start with evidence: how shoppers decide, what the buyer believes, and what the category data actually shows once every competitor is in the picture. Opinion is replaced by a shared set of facts.
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Innovation
From that foundation we build the strategy: the assortment, the price and promotion plan, the portfolio scenario or the category story. It is customized to your objectives and to each retailer's strategy, never lifted from a playbook.
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Implementation
We prepare the recommendation for the buyer's desk, sit with your category and customer teams through the line review, and revise the work as the retailer's plans move. The engagement ends when the change is executed.
Who we work with
Manufacturers with a shelf to win, and the retailers who decide it.
Our clients are branded manufacturers competing in measured categories at the national chains. Retail merchandising teams also engage us for an objective read on a category.
The roles we support
- Category management and category development
- Sales and customer teams on major accounts
- Shopper and consumer insights
- Net revenue and revenue growth management
- Brand, innovation and general management
Retail channels
- Food
- Drug
- Mass
- Club
- Dollar
- Online
We take on one client per category, so the recommendation we bring to a retailer is never in competition with another one of ours.
Why Edgewood
What clients tell us matters most.
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The people who build it present it
No hand-off between an analysis team and a delivery team. The consultant who ran the model explains it to your leadership and, when asked, to the buyer.
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Credible on the other side of the desk
Recommendations are framed around the category rather than your brand alone, which is why retailers treat them as objective rather than as a supplier pitch.
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Fast enough to matter
Work is scoped to the decision in front of you and the meeting it has to survive, so the answer arrives while it can still change the outcome.
Contact
Tell us the category and the decision.
Whether it is a line review, a portfolio review, a pricing change or a launch, we will say plainly whether our work applies and what an engagement would involve.
Talk to Edgewood