Acting on Impulse
The ice cream market in France is both highly competitive, driven by the impulse purchase, and highly attuned to innovation with more than 80 new products being introduced on store shelves each year. As a result, market growth relies heavily on new flavors and formats as well as strategic store aisle placement, shelving and product visibility to inspire consumer impulse purchases.
General Mills France (www.generalmills.com), a subsidiary of General Mills, is driving growth and gaining market share in the retail ice cream category (12.4 percent as of 2014) by injecting innovation into its Hagen-Dazs premium brand of ice cream. Improving collaboration with retailers to enhancing the consumer shopping experience in the category as a whole are key components of this strategy.
“As we are not anymore a niche brand, we do have a real category responsibility,” says Stanislas de Maleissye, Category & Trade Marketing director, General Mills France. “To endorse this change it was necessary to adapt our ways of working in category management, moving from a ‘brand centric’ organization to a truly ‘category centric’ mindset.”
When the company launched new ice cream stick bars in five flavors in March 2015, a powerful category management solution was also implemented to support the project. General Mills France deployed Dassault Systemes’ “Perfect Shelf” industry solution experience, based on the 3DExperience platform, to demonstrate category merchandising expertise to retailers by recommending shelving scenarios, based on shopper research, that enhance its brand and increase the retailer’s category revenue.
Leveraging advanced, cloud-based 3D modeling and visualization applications, General Mills France collaborates with mass-market retailers to provide realistic views of store aisles including shelves, fixtures, products, lighting and promotional materials, along with an immersive shopping experience from a consumer perspective.
“This collaborative solution brings a new and innovative dimension to category management,” says de Maleissye. “It has been a great opportunity for richer and relevant discussions about ice cream shelf structure and organization.”
Take the Hagen-Dazs stick bar launch as an example. General Mills France used the solution to immerse customers in their own stores in 3D, showing a new category vision or shelf organization including the new product line. As a consequence, Hagen-Dazs stick bars have been one of the most successful food introductions in France over 2015.
“We are at the very beginning on our journey,” says de Maleissye. “Tomorrow, this solution will show its full potential, from product marketing design to its positioning at the core of retailers’ merchandising strategies.”