Nolan Finest Food Case Analysis

Decrease or Replace

MKTG 3506
Instructor: Mary Conran
March 1, 2011

TABLE OF KEY CONCEPTS
Category Captain (Levy & Weitz, 2009, p. 333) 2
Editing the Assortment (Levy & Weitz, 2009, p. 350) 3 Assortment (Levy & Weitz, 2009, p. 349) 3
Product availability (Levy & Weitz, 2009, p. 352) 4
Variety (Levy & Weitz, 2009, p. 242) 4

Nolan Finest Food is a food and drug combo store in San Francisco. They have received information that a competitor named Valumart will be opening ten new food and drug combo stores throughout Nolan’s market. In response management decides to try a new strategy called
Exhibit one thru three represents the national trends in the shampoo category and trends in supermarkets. These reports can help build an idea of which brands to start off with in evaluating what is making profits nationally and what is making profits for Nolan. The competitor Valumart would more than likely use the same statics to get a sense on what to put in their new stores and will start with the category captain. Nolan would already have an advantage on this aspect because they would know what the favorites in their market are compared to the national markets. Exhibit four tells management how Nolan sales are doing compared to the national sales. This information can tell what changes need to be made or if a particular product is just not a heavy seller in Nolan’s market. There could be a need for editing the assortment if product sales are not at a good level for a category. Exhibit five thru six concentrated on an analysis of Nolan and the competition based off product mix and pricing. With these reports management can identify one way competition is beating Nolan profits, by evaluating if it because of better pricing or assortment of products. Nolan may want to adjust their pricing or mix as a response to these results. These analyses give a lead way for Nolan to start from that can beneficial.
“Category management can enable manufacturers to more accurately judge consumer buying patterns, product sales and market trends of categories”. (Jason Busch) The last quotes describe why it is so important to follow category management for a chance of advancement with in Nolan’s Company. Nolan has also recently installed in the past year an information system that makes this task easier to do. For example there could be five shampoos by Dove, Pantene, Herbal Essences, Suave, and Head and Shoulder that are the main choices in the shampoo category provided by Nolan. Ignacio does the necessary research through the information system and finds out that Herbal Essence and Head and Shoulder sales are the lowest. With the “knock out the slow seller” approach the options to turn that ratio around to positive would include substitution or decrease of quantity. With the Nation trend analysis Ignacio can find that another brand such as Garnier Fructis shampoo is showing to be profitable and decide to substitute that with Herbal Essence. Head and Shoulder may be better used if there was less quantity and the space used by a product that seem to be the most profitable. With time Nolan will see a better inventory turnover due to the better predictions