Category analysis in retail is when you group similar stock items together into categories so they can be compared against each other. It is the main retail management tool used today.
The idea is that many customers come into a shop with a certain category of product in mind for example they want a comic or a birthday card but they don't know exactly. They don't care who the supplier of the card is John Sands, Hallmark, Artwrap etc.
What you need to do is identify what the customer is looking for so you can satisfy them.
Once you do buy something they often will buy something else too.
That is all well and good but category analysis has been hampered by the lack of data. Since most of our clients have too large a range of stock to do the job themselves with the resources. Even putting this aside, it is very hard to do it since many products are not advertised by the retailer.
That is why they look at the suppliers to do it. Unfortunately too many suppliers have been unable or unwilling to supply these categories.
Still magazine suppliers did come together to put their products into category system called MPA. It was done originally for advertisers but it was snapped up by retailers too. Those that use it have found that their sales went up if only as it made the display more organized.
Following the success in the magazine companies, we have been attempting to reestablish this in the card industry. Since in many shops the cards are not integrated now, we think it would have a better effect here then what we have seen in magazine sections.
For this reason we have had numerous telephone calls, emails and meeting between us and many of the card companies in an attempt to get them all to use an integrated system too.
In the current integrated card category system, the cards are divided up into the following categories
A -Anniversary
B1-Special Birth
B2-Female
B3-Male
B4-Juvenile
B5-Birthday
BC-Birth
C -Convalescent or Get Well
E -Easter
EC-Engagement
FD-Father
GB–Gift Bags/Boxes
M -Greeting Card
MD-Mother
RB-Ribbon or Bow
S -Sympathy
ST–Stationery
V -Valentines
W -Wedding
WR–Wrapping Paper
XC-Calendar
XG-Xmas
XS-Christmas Special
-Others
The following card companies have now adopted this category system for their card range.
Artwrap
Browntrout
Card and paper house
Charity cards
Henderson Greetings Barcodes
John Sands
Katcards
Max Publishing
Simson Cards
Spirit publishing
So as you can see this project has made quite a lot of progress. Obviously, there are some that we would like to join. If you have card suppliers not on this list, please ask them why not?
For this and other supplier files, please visit here
Note if you are on POS DOS please reindex before importing the files.
