RTM:  How do you see relationships with retailers changing?  Many people talk about a move towards a win/win situation and away from price negotiations but, in reality, in most industries price still seems to be the number one issue for many retailers.

FM:  Well, price is important, but I don’t see it as the primary request.  There are many other things we can deliver apart from a product at a price. And I do see a shift among retailers towards a more collaborative approach.

RTM: What kind of things are we talking about?

FM: Well, it can take a number of forms.  The retailer may want to understand the category dynamics around a particular brand.  In many cases the brand manufacturer has significant information on how and why consumers shop for a particular brand.  We need to marry that up to the needs and go-to-market strategy of the retailer.

RTM: Can you give an example?

FM: A lot of our work is around helping the retailer to sell a solution, rather than simple products. So someone who has a cold might want to buy several items.  This may include items that you would not normally expect to see on sale in a pharmacy, such as a vaporizer to provide relief in the room.

RTM: Umm, I see. I suppose people with a heavy cold, who might once have just bought paracetamol, are happy to spend $10 or more if they can see a solution which will help them go to work, sleep properly and ensure that they look good.

FM: Absolutely. Colds or the upper respiratory category were once considered seasonal products. But there is a tremendous amount of lasering you can do relative to the brands in that category.  This allows us to pinpoint action steps that the manufacturer can offer.

RTM: It is interesting, what you said about seasonality.

FM: Yes, we now have a lot of learning that shows that the chronic, everyday sufferer has a very different set of needs from the episodic sufferer.  If retailers can understand this difference and pinpoint the chronic sufferers, they can start to meet their needs.

RTM: So you really are having a discussion with the retailer which has little to do with price?

FM: Oh absolutely. The retailer becomes the supplier of a solution to his customers. The value of the sale climbs very steeply, and the nature of the relationship between the customer and the retailer, and between us and the retailer, changes completely.

RTM: Doesn’t this kind of co-operation with different retailers lead to conflicts of interest?  Isn’t there a risk that you are seen to be helping one retailer rather than another, or a danger that you end up encouraging them all to have the same retail format?

FM: No, we don’t see it like that. We don’t adopt a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all strategy. On the contrary, we have conversations based on the readiness and desire of the retailer to address what he sees as his customers’ needs. They tend to be very different conversations!

RTM: Talking to white goods manufacturers it is clear that they tend to develop exclusive relationships with retailers. And some of them are quite ruthless about not working with retailers who they perceive as non-co-operative. Do you adopt that approach at all?

FM: No, this is a totally different business, where I guess breadth of distribution and product availability counts for a lot. So we tend to adopt an approach of "the more, the better!"

RTM: I know that, in the USA, pharmaceutical vendors have developed a lot of informational sites focused on particular medical conditions. You are giving a lot of information to the end-consumer.  Do retailers object to that?

FM: Not in my experience. If the retailers had to meet the information needs of all their consumers, life would quickly become unmanageable. They are happy for us to shoulder some of the responsibility.

RTM: I suppose all of this means using a wider variety of channels.  I gather, for instance, that you are putting your new mouth-freshener film through tobacconists and confectioners – people who would previously not have sold these products.

FM: Yes, you have to match consumer needs to channels all the time.  Customers want the convenience of buying these products alongside a newspaper.

RTM:  How much do you rely on data from retailers?  Are you finding that the new loyalty card schemes mean that retailers have much more detailed information of their own to share with you?

FM: To some extent, but that varies from country to country.  For instance, in the USA the whole area of loyalty cards is very new compared with its use by companies in the UK, like Boots and Tesco. People are just beginning to look at the data and ask how they can use it. There are also data protection issues in the USA and elsewhere.

RTM: So have these changes in how you handle retailers led to big changes in your own organisation?

FM: Not really. I guess you could say that we have evolved as the readiness level of the retailer has evolved and we match those new needs with competencies.

I think there has also been a move towards closer links with senior managers at head office with more frequent "Top-to-Top" meetings.

RTM: So it is all about creating value-add.

FM: Yes!  What I love in my job is having a meeting between the top managers from a retailer and our top people and having a really robust exchange of information, which can lead to our identifying potential opportunities and making an agreement on how to pursue them.