I was having dinner the other day with a friend who couldn't stop complaining about her job when it hit me -- I love my job. As a CPG analyst, I get to spend my time investigating stuff that might seem uninteresting to others but just fascinates me. Things like:

Grocery shopping. What most consider a chore, I consider a labor of love. My shopping trips take twice as long as they should because I'm always checking out new products and deals (I'm a big fan of Land O'Lakes' new Soft Baking Butter). Yesterday, I took a field trip to a Stop & Shop in Quincy, Mass. to test out smart screens mounted on grocery carts. Shoppers use these devices to scan items and get personalized promotions while they shop. I love shopping the perimeter, so my favorite feature is an alert that lets customers know when a deli order is ready. Data from frequent shopper cards puts the "smart" in these smart screens. Yes, you read that correctly: Frequent shopper cards can be effective loyalty tools. Proof: I use my CVS ExtraCare card whenever I fill prescriptions, and I've always liked the dollar-off front-of-store items like lipstick and hair conditioner. But I'm still waiting for the day when my local store moves the cosmetics aisle closer to the store entrance. CVS did this in nearly 1,000 stores after card data showed that beauty-conscious women are its most profitable customers.

Consumers. I spend a lot of time on CPG sites as an analyst and a consumer. On Bettycrocker.com, I just rediscovered the recipe for Bisquick sausage and cheese balls (General Mills, my entire book club would like to thank you). But while some sites wow grocery shoppers, Forrester's analysis of 24 leading CPG sites shows that there's always room for improvement. Quick fixes for increasing site returns include using promotions in "Tell A Friend" functionality and improving navigation during site redesigns.

Everything Wal-Mart. I've lived in Boston for nearly a decade, but my heart is still in Louisiana. I visited my first discount store when Wal-Mart came to my hometown nearly 30 years ago, and I've been fascinated by Wal-Mart ever since. During a recent trip back home, I opened my parents' refrigerator to find it stocked with Wal-Mart's private-label products. Guess my folks are among the 47% of US consumers who consider price more important than brand name. With its low-prices obsession, it's no wonder that Wal-Mart is telling its suppliers to use RFID-tagged cases and pallets by January 1, 2005.

Technology. Last week, my husband came home from the store with the exciting news that he had bought his first item containing an RFID tag. Well, it turns out that the item's packaging only had an everyday security tag. But still, my husband is part of the growing number of consumers who have heard of RFID because of the recent news stories about Gillette, Tesco.com, and Wal-Mart (and, in his case, a wife who spends her days looking at CPG technology). Even with uncertainty about item-level RFID, CPG manufacturers are steaming ahead with new technology projects. The average CPG CIO will spend 25% of her technology budget on new IT investments this year. That number is only 20% in other industries. Two of my Forrester colleagues, Sharyn Leaver and Noha Tohamy, have some good insight on demand management and supply chain execution vendors -- which should help CPG CIOs spend their money wisely.

That's enough about my job. I hope that many of you have some equally fascinating work keeping you busy this fall and winter. Feel free to respond to this email if you have any stories or comments from the frontline. I'm always eager to hear them!


Christine Overby
Senior Analyst, Consumer Packaged Goods

Research Referenced In This Issue If you printed this email, get links to the research featured in this week's issue by going to www.forrester.com/go and entering the five-digit number of the report you'd like to read. Build A Better CPG Web Site To Boost Offline Sales (16816) CRM Best Practices: CVS Loyalty Card Marketing (16908) Fixing Grocery Loyalty Programs (13832) Forrester Waves™: Demand Management And Demand Forecasting (17223) Retail February 2003 Data Overview: A Gender Analysis Of Online Shopping Behaviors (16089) SAP's SCM Initiatives: Execution Errors Loom Large (17008) Shoppers Rank Wal-Mart, Target, And Kmart (17213) Smart Multichannel Grocery Retail Strategies (16718) Smart Screens = New Retail Points Of Influence (16979) Tech Spending Summary: CPG (16842) The Increasing Significance Of Price Over Brand (17197) Wal-Mart Drops Item-Level RFID Pilot: Big Whoop (17140) Wal-Mart's RFID Endorsement: The Tipping Point (16962) Web Sites Continue To Fail The Usability Test (17226)

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