Market Track: September 2011
Promotions during September saw mixed outcome with some retailers increasing the number of pages and inserts, while the rest decreased the volume of promotions. The contrasting promotional strategies among the retailers led to the overall change being minimal.
Like August, the largest decrease was Lowes, which saw a 61% drop in number of number of pages per market and 54% decline in inserts per market. This was a result of Lowes not having promotions in the second and third week of both August and September.
Apart from Lowes, Walmart and Staples also decreased number of pages and inserts compared to the previous year. Neither retailer ran promotions in the last week of September.
Interestingly there has been no change in number of inserts from Home Depot, Kmart, Target and Toys"R"Us; however, there has been increase in number of pages per market for all except Toys"R"US, when compared to past year.
Safeway saw highest percentage (36%) increase in number of pages among select retailers. However, the number of inserts had a marginal drop of 3% as compared to previous year.
Similar to August, Best Buy continued with increasing page count per market, while reducing the number of inserts per market.
JCPenney and Sears followed the same strategy of dropping more inserts, while cutting down on the number of pages.
It’s important to note a number of factors that should be considered when examining the number of inserts and pages retailers send into the marketplace. Market Track’s granular level of data reflects regional versioning and market specific differences. This is accomplished through an extensive collections process, including physically obtaining the ads from the various markets in which they are distributed. In the instance that retailers send additional circulars to a limited number of markets, Market Track’s information reflects these nuances through numbers with decimals (for average number of inserts per market) and odd numbers (for average number of pages).
About Market Track:
Market Track is a market intelligence firm dedicated to increasing customers’ returns on their promotional investments. Through innovative technology and marketplace expertise, it monitors and analyze over 200 U.S. and Canadian markets for every channel of trade in order provide retailers and manufacturers with superior tools to monitor promotional activity, support dynamic decision making and turn information into market intelligence. For more information, contact Market Track at 1.800.235.3781 or e-mail [email protected].