Category Management | Group 11 Term 4 | Product Management

Executive Summary

"They just want us to buy whatever they want to sell"

"They don't know what brands I like and when they do, they don't have the right sizes"

"Their advertisements show fabulous discounts on products, but those are the ones that are not in stock"

The above lines show the common frustrations of the Indian Shopper which are seen to be prevalent across the Indian Retail Industry. [1] The solution to most of these issues lies in efficient category management.

Part-1 of our project was a literature survey on various available research papers on category management. Almost all research on this field has been done using market research in European/American geographies and almost no paper quotes examples of any research done in the Indian market. Though the examples may be foreign, the underlying concepts of Category Management remain the same even in the Indian context.

The bathroom fittings category in Wal*Mart

English: Category Management Process in Latvian

ArquitecturaDeLaEmpresa

Through the second part of our project, we have tried to apply the concepts that the research bought out, to the Indian context and tried to understand the issues in category management in India and what could possibly be done to negate them. We have used news articles and few available reports on Category management practices in India for better understanding.

Category Management in the beverage market has been used as a focal point to relate the concepts in many cases. Primary research on category management problems at Hector Beverages (Tzinga) and category captain activities of Dabur/Coke have been studied in relation to this. The report also quotes examples of CM activities in other product categories from other data sources relating to the concepts which may be relevant in that case.

The report explains various facets of Category management: how category management is...