Winning Retail Tactics, New Product Insights and Differentiation Strategies Highlight FMI Show Education CDs

WASHINGTON, DC — June 2, 2005 — Premier educational sessions from the 2005 Food Marketing Institute (FMI) Show are now available for sale in compact disc format. The program features topics such as winning retail strategies for the future, reinventing grocery in a value-driven world and freshness in the eyes of the consumer.
     

The discs contain full audio from the sessions, speaker biographies and handouts. Sessions that are available include:

• Speaks 2005: Building a Winning Strategy for the Future — What are the economic, competitive and consumer trends shaping the supermarket industry in 2005? FMI's annual compilation of key statistics, opinions and ideas for coping with the biggest challenges facing the industry offers some of the answers. This presentation includes new statistics on industry sales and profits, merchandising trends, hot buttons for shoppers, employee healthcare and insights into governmental and other outside forces affecting the industry.




• The Shift Continues: Reinventing Grocery Retail in the Value-Driven World — The face of retail continues to transform itself so dramatically that it would be unrecognizable to the observer of 20 years ago. Today’s competitive questions remain unchanged, but the response of traditional food retailers is one of nibbling around the edges of possible solutions rather than executing strategies that differentiate themselves to customers. The threat to mainstream food retail continues to grow. This session details the nature of the threat and offers specific paths retailers can take to differentiate and reinvent their businesses in a value-driven world.




• The Changing Business Environment for Food Retailing — Traditional food retailers lost roughly 10 points of market share over the past decade as value and specialty players, mass merchants and club stores increasingly dominate the retail landscape. At the same time, the environment for food retailing is increasingly polarized. This presentation looks at the economic, competitive, technological and consumer forces that will transform food retailing over the next decade. It addresses what the successful food retailer of the future will look like with smaller stores, more technological agility and more bonds to the consumer and the community.




• New Products: A View Forward — What’s new? What’s hot? What’s not? New products are the lifeblood of the food industry — an ever-changing mix constantly being renewed by an influx of new items, flavors and packaging. This session reveals how new products and top brands showcased at the 2004 FMI Show have fared in the marketplace, and shares insights that can help predict the success of this year’s offerings. The session will also reveal what’s on the minds of consumers; offer new item concepts in use outside of the United States; and illustrate ways to consider new product decisions beyond those the food industry has relied on in the past.




• The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less — With a delivery that is funny, casual and persuasive all at the same time, Barry Schwartz is a prominent authority on the social and psychological effects of free-market economic institutions on moral, social and civic concerns. In a presentation based on his most recent book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Schwartz describes “the tyranny of choice” — how consumers are paralyzed by the bewildering array of choices in the marketplace. Schwartz details the forces affecting customers and how to offer them choices at store level.




• In Search of Freshness: How to Make Your Store Stand Out! — How do customers define 'fresh’? How does fresh go beyond perishable departments and encompass the total store image? Hundreds of interviews with customers yielded some key flashpoints in a store that affect its fresh image the most. This session identifies these flashpoints and ways a store can merchandise them in the quest to differentiate itself from the competition and build profitability.

     
To purchase a 2005 FMI Show CD ($25 members, $42.50 associate members and $50 nonmembers), visit the FMI Store at www.fmi.org/pub.