The influence of store cleanliness and POSM branding on revenue generation: learnings from a project with a major furniture brand

Abstract

This internship report is written by an ongoing full-time employee of Grumpy Coffee Marketing, holding the position of Executive, Market Research and Campaign Execution, whose main responsibilities entail performing a wide range of research and consulting tasks and coordinating in-the-field activities. The organization is a research-driven marketing agency, which offers a wide range of research, consulting, and marketing solutions to its clientele. The time spent so far with the organization has helped the employee gain exposure to a wide range of industries, hone their range of soft and hard skills, and expanded the employee’s professional network. The marketing agency landscape of Bangladesh is dominated by agencies which offer little in the way of research and consumer insights, with a small number offering digital quantitative insights and the rest offering none whatsoever. On the other hand, there are some dedicated research and consulting firms, but they are prohibitively expensive for most businesses and do not offer any marketing solutions. Grumpy Coffee Marketing, having started its journey in mid- 2020, aims to serve this gap in the market by offering research and consulting services along with marketing solutions driven by its own research at an accessible price point. The services the firm offers range from distribution chain analysis, retail audits, and consumer journey mapping to digital marketing, campaign execution, and brand identity development. The organization is a partnership firm with a very low power distance culture and a laissez faire leadership style, with employees receiving very little micromanagement. The firm’s employees generally take ownership of their assigned work, quickly learn to tackle problems critically, and are given a lot of decision-making headroom. Given such an organizational culture, the firm practices headhunting when recruiting employees to ensure a proper organizational fit. Much emphasis is also given on the training and development of employees in order to achieve business objectives, with the firm offering access to online courses, and the partners of the firm providing on-the-job training and mentoring. The firm’s business level strategy is an amalgamation of Umbrella Strategy and Process Strategy, both of which are variants of Emergent Strategy (Mintzberg & Waters, 1985), and its marketing strategy is an Umbrella Strategy. In terms of generic strategies (Porter, 1980), its marketing strategy is a Differentiation Strategy, with the firm’s USP being that it serves as a one-stop solution for both qualitative and quantitative research driven marketing, where actionable insights and the actions themselves can be sought from the same provider. The firm’s target clients are brands which believe in research-driven marketing, have an interesting marketing problem to solve, and do not engage in unethical business practices. Currently, the firm is undergoing a rebranding initiative, and as such its own promotional activities are temporarily suspended. In terms of financial performance, the firm seems to be doing well, but not much financial analysis is possible, as the firm currently has yet to complete even two full years of operations, with only one year’s financial statements being present at the time of this report’s preparation. Furthermore, comparative data is also not available as the firm operates in an industry where relevant competitors are not publicly traded companies. Given that the firm is small in size and sells highly customizable professional services, there does not exist much in terms of operations management. Its reliance on information systems is generally limited to various communication platforms, project management tools, online document editors, a suite of creative and design softwares, and a number of data analytics tools. Since the firm operates in a cross section of the marketing and research industries, it faces a higher-than-moderate overall competitive landscape, with only the threat of direct competitors being very low because of its unique positioning, while almost every other competitive force being high or very high. The firm’s biggest strength is that it offers marketing services based on actionable insights gained from research work that it itself performs, driven by close collaboration between its research and creative content teams, with its biggest weakness being its small company size. Its biggest opportunity is its first mover advantage, and its biggest threat is the threat of other agencies in Bangladesh starting to offer research-driven marketing solutions. Recommendations for the firm are to increase its employee headcount, and to accelerate its ongoing rebranding initiative. The project section of this report explores the effects of store cleanliness and POSM (Point of Sales Materials) branding on revenue generation through the lens of a project conducted with a client of Grumpy Coffee Marketing in the context of the furniture industry. Qualitative observations of multiple retail stores were made before and after improvements were made in store cleanliness and POSM branding, and then validated against quantitative monthly revenue figures from each retail store. The findings suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between store cleanliness and POSM branding and the generation of revenue. These findings have implications for both the client and the furniture industry as a whole, while also opening up areas for future researchers to evaluate the effects of store cleanliness and POSM branding as independent factors, and their relevance in other industries.