Category Analysis
Definition:  Analyzes the category’s consumer trends and market demographics in order to make recommendations for future marketing and sales campaigns and launched. The category analysis also related to studies for forecasting, pre/post-promotional analysis, and product development.
* A client can utilize The Lemonaders Team or its partners to perform the important needs for category analysis.

What a Category Analysis Entails (or the Role of a Category Analyst)
The Category Analyst serves as an analytic and category expert using the category management process as a decision platform for initiatives designed to optimize distribution, shelving, price and promotional mix for the company’s products. The Category Analyst acts as an interface between sales, marketing, business development, shopper marketing, shopper insights, business analytics and market research in developing food category management/strategic solutions to drive profitability and category growth. This individual is responsible for managing, analyzing, and developing fact based reporting tools to deliver concise category management recommendations.

Typical activities include:

  • Utilizing internal shipment data, Nielsen consumption data (syndicated, strategic planner, & panel), customer portal data (consumption & consumer), and other industry sources to identify opportunities.
  • Creates reports to include monthly region, market, and customer trend reporting, distribution grids, new product tracking, velocity reports, plan-o-gram development, and pricing & promotion analysis.
  • Establishes a strong knowledge of the food industry
  • Develops training to improve the outside sales team’s fact-based selling skills.
  • Creates promotional analysis tools that can help maximize customer promotions along with the company’s return on investment.

Example Reports and Graphs

Competitive Analysis

Definition:  A competitive analysis is a strategy where you identify major competitors and research their products, sales, and marketing strategies. By doing this, you can create solid business strategies that improve upon your competitor’s. A competitive analysis helps you learn the ins and outs of how your competition works.

What a Competitive Analysis Entails (source – Hubspot)

Every brand can benefit from regular competitor analysis. By performing a competitor analysis, you’ll be able to:

  • Identify gaps in the market
  • Develop new products and services
  • Uncover market trends
  • Market and sell more effectively

As you can see, learning any of these four components will lead your brand down the path of achievement. But before you get too excited to start, we need to nail down a few important basics.

Once you identify your true competition, you’ll need to determine what metrics you’ll be comparing across the board.

There are nine steps relating to a successful competitive analysis:

01.)  Determine who your competitors are.
02.)  Determine what products your competitors offer.
03.)  Research your competitors sales tactics and results.
04.)  Analyze how your competitors market their products.
05.)  Take note of your competition’s content strategy.
06.)  Analyze the level of engagement on your competitor’s content.
07.)  Observe how they promote marketing content.
08.)  Look at their social media presence, strategies, and go-to platforms
09.)  Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

The Lemonaders Team handles competitive analysis reports a number of times annually for its brands and for partnering brands.