Study on the Scope and Opportunities of Category Management for Aligning the Supplier-Retailer Business Strategy

Today’s fragmented and intensely competitive market place is an obstacle for retailers and suppliers to do business in a traditional way. Even customers have never been more sophisticated. In this perspective, thousands of ideas has already been brought though articles, journals and books and thousands of seminars has been held to define a new way of managing business. Just as tremendous heat and pressure create diamond, these uncertainties and competitive challenges has produced a new marketing idea known as category management that offers a wealth of opportunity for those who can adopt with this systematic approach. In this paper, some definition and structure-oriented phases as well as the challenging areas of category management are mentioned. In the next step, a perfect scenario through different stages starting from zero is brought out to show how retailers and suppliers can overcome the power game and collaborate with each other. Finally, it has been shown that a trustworthy relationship, coupled with in-store implementation of category management, can create a win-win situation for both retailers and suppliers. Therefore, this paper defines the way of increasing profitability by taking into account all the factors that influence it on the shop floor and focusing on products with a high circulation, creating regular customers by focusing the product supply to target consumers and developing in-store marketing through space management and well-instructed product display.