Category Captain: Gum: Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co.

Continually striving to exceed the demands of its retail partners through state-of-the-art tools and research and development of its teams to stay ahead of in-store trends while developing future merchandising and management solutions, Wrigley has been successful in driving strong joint partnerships that leverage the company’s in-store knowledge.

Wrigley has invested more than $7 million over the past decade in U.S.-based research and executed nearly 20 independent studies around in-store shopper dynamics. In 2011, the company developed a new department that focuses solely on shopper insights. This partnership with the shopper team enables category management to bring insights and opportunities to life at retail.

Over the past year, Wrigley has worked with retailers on testing new front end merchandising concepts that affect the entire confectionery category. Because many retailers are developing technologies to diffuse traditional dwell time at the front end, Wrigley is aggressively focusing on “dwell time management” as shoppers migrate from traditional checklanes to self-checkouts. Further, Wrigley has continued to develop its holistic “Power Practices” in-aisle insights with its partners at Mars, which prescribe optimal aisle size, share of space and positioning by segment.

Wrigley has provided consistent, positive results for retailers who continue to test and implement holistic gum and mint positioning over the belt. Moreover, while the number of self-checkouts is expected to double by the end of 2012, Wrigley urges retailers to merchandise relevant power categories that drive impulse sales per transaction, particularly when considering the company’s estimates that project nearly 70 percent of grocery accounts will have merchandising at self-checkout registers by the end of this year.

One of Wrigley’s major retail customers perhaps summed it up best: “The leadership that Wrigley provides in checklane and in-aisle confections reflects the fact that they are concerned not only with their own business, but with the health of the total confectionery category.”