Win the market before the pallet ships.
One market or forty, one brand or twelve, a few hundred venues or a few million — and which venues take your category’s visits, Saudi Arabia included.
Customers rate a category the same in two markets.Against everything else on sale there, Market B is ahead and Market A is behind.
Ask the question you carry into the room.
Seven things brand and market leads say, and what comes back.
What brand and market leads say
one category, one market at a time
Is the demand there, or are we guessing?
Customers in that market’s venues already rate the category.
Across 35 markets it is rated ahead of everything else on sale in the same venues in 9.
Enter where it is already rated ahead.
A pallet sent where the market has already answered.
Which market do we open first?
The category’s own rating ranks them one way. Its rating against everything else on sale ranks them another.
Ranked that way, 9 markets come out rated ahead of everything else on sale, and 25 behind.
Order the markets by that second ranking.
A shortlist the room can accept.
Which venues sell the category, and how do customers rate it there?
Every venue that sells a category also has customers rating it.
In one venue type, one venue in 17 sells it. In another, one in 340.
Work the kind that is rated best first.
A channel plan built on venues.
Where is the category asked for, past the accounts we hold?
A category’s rating forms across all of a market’s venues, well past any one account.
One venue type takes 6 in every 10 consumer visits for the category — fewer than one venue in ten of that market.
Bring evidence of demand from beyond the account.
A category story from outside the account.
Why should we take this brand on?
The category’s demand and its rating sit in that distributor’s own market, type by type.
Of one venue type, 64% of its venues are rated best on the category; of another, 43%.
Walk in with the market in hand.
A meeting that starts at the terms.
Are we early here, or late?
The rate at which new venues open says whether a category is early or late.
That rate roughly halved in 4 markets. In 2 others it rose, over the same two years.
Enter the market where new venues are still opening.
An entry timed to the market.
Did the venues pass our price on to the menu?
Most venues held it, and many already passed it on to the menu.
In one market, 35% of the venues that list one soft drink raised its menu price over the past year, typically by about 5%. Of the same venues, 59% held it.
Take the next price where venues held theirs.
Price headroom, venue by venue.
Set the entry order by how the category rates against everything else on sale.
A retail-sales panel counts only where a maker already ships. The next market sits outside that count. One category, 35 markets, one measure applied the same way. It ranks the markets differently from the category’s own rating.
One category, 35 markets: rated ahead of everything else on sale in 9
Ahead or behind: how customers rate the category, compared with everything else the same venues sell.Open where the category already rates ahead of everything else on sale. Where it rates behind, change the venue mix first.
Just ask Realytics “Which markets rate our category ahead of everything else on sale?”
Grow a category first in the kinds of venue where it is rated best.
Six kinds of venue in one market: how many of each kind sell a category, and how many of those are rated best on it.
A category sells widest in one kind of venue and is rated best in another.
The more of a category’s visits a venue takes, the better customers rate it there.
Group the venues of one market by how many of a category’s visits each one takes. The rating climbs at every step.
Supply first the venues that already take most of the category’s visits.
Just ask Realytics “Which venues take the most of our category’s visits?”
Keep the recipe. Fix what customers say it is worth.
Between the market where a category is rated best and the one where it is rated worst, the taste rating barely moves.
The same category, its best market against its worst
The distance between them, in points of positive shareThe venues the most of it goes through, against the rest
Points of positive share between the twoThe recipe travels. Portion size and price are the work.
Find every menu that lists your brand or cooks with your ingredient.
Every menu item is matched to the brands it names and the ingredients it uses. A brand team sees every venue that lists its product and what each charges by volume; an ingredient maker sees every kitchen that cooks with it, district by district.
Sample one ingredient, one city
Café menus that use oat milk, district by district
The share of each district’s café menus that list it.Sample one drink, three formats
One drink on menus: price per 100 ml
Against the single can, set at 100.Sell first where menus already use it, and compare prices by volume.
Just ask Realytics “Which menus in our markets list our brand, and at what price?”
Tell the market that is opening from the one that is closing.
The rate at which new venues open for a category moves in opposite directions, at the same time.
One category, ten markets, two years
The change in the rate at which new venues open, from the same baseline.Enter the market where new venues are still opening. Hold off on the one that is slowing.
Set every team to work from one list of venues.
Each team inside a maker used to stop where its own numbers stopped: the last account that reports, the distributor’s spreadsheet, one market’s edge. One set of numbers on the venues where a category is sold and rated takes every team past that point.
Every market on the same measure, before anything ships
- Every market where the category is rated, on one measure.
- How it stands against everything else served in those venues.
- How fast new venues open for it, market by market.
The market’s venues, type by type, out of one record
- Every venue type in the market, and how much each stocks.
- What consumers there say about it, attribute by attribute.
- Which types sell it least, and how customers rate it there.
Every venue in the channel, counted at last
- Every venue that serves the category, by type and street.
- How customers rate it inside each type, and each chain.
- Which of those venues are still trading, week by week.
A cause for the number, not another number
- What people praise about the category, and what stops them.
- Who chooses it — their generation, and whether they live there.
- How those attributes are rated in the venues that take most of its visits.
Where the premium is earned, not merely charged
- The premium the category earns, market by market.
- The portion-size rating beside it, on the same venues.
- What venues charge for the product on the menu, and who raised it this year.
The proof that exists before the first meeting
- How widely each venue type sells it, and how well.
- The words consumers in that distributor’s market use about it.
- Whether the venues that sell it are getting busier.
Six teams, six questions, one set of venues behind every answer.
Take one venue type and ask it the same six questions.
Each of the six answers for the venues that sell your category.
Get the answer for the market first, then look into the venues behind it.
Weekly refreshed, since 2020
Rank the market you are about to enter.
What makes a category stand ahead in some markets and behind in others? Leave your email and name the market. We send the ranking, with the venue types behind it.