Jamie Tenser

VSN Strategies

James (“Jamie”) Tenser is an author and consultant to the retail and consumer products industry. His firm VSN Strategies focuses on merchandising, marketing, consumer behavior, Shopper Media, Category Management, service practices, and multichannel retailing. He is Executive Director and founding member of the In-Store Implementation Network and he serves on several corporate advisory boards.

Call It Mobile Yellow

0 comments 502 reads

Posted on 2012-05-15

Scan these tags

I SPIED THE WHOLE grocery universe in a single bunch of fruit. This transcendental experience occurred just last week in West Des Moines, IA. (Quite rightly.)
It all happened in a bright, spacious HyVee supermarket in an upscale, verdant neighborhood that a decade ago was pretty much a cornfield. I entered the store thinking, "They built this, so I have come."

But my Field of Dreams reverie dissolved when I stepped up to the produce department. My first view was an abundant display of bananas...

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Of Habit and Target

0 comments 496 reads

Posted on 2012-05-05

The New York Times Magazine made people nervous with its February 19th cover story by author Charles Duhigg. Its chilling headline, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” seems to have compelled readership as a matter of personal protection. I make this inference from the number of acquaintances who asked me about it.
[Author's Note: This column was originally published on March 13, 20122 in the TradeInsight CPG Chatter blog.]

“Creepy” was the adjective repeated most...

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"Omni" What? It's Da BOMB

0 comments 719 reads

Posted on 2012-01-30

IN MY MEANDERS around the vibrant NRF Expo hall (#NRF12) in New York this month, I tried my best to spot the visible stars of the show and detect the invisible three-degree background radiation that lurks behind the retail firmament.
The atmosphere was energized, the crowds were large and buzzwords were flying. Shopper insights swirled in the cloud, mobile technology hype charged the atmosphere, and business intelligence oozed out of every software booth into glowing puddles on the Javits Center exhibit floor.

Ultimately there was too much for one greying, recovering journalist to absorb. This is surely why I wound up at the bar in...

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A Web of Truths

0 comments 750 reads

Posted on 2011-07-28
Watch out, Shopper Marketers! You may find yourselves entangled in a web of truths of your own making.
It all began innocently enough; in 2005 when brand marketing behemoth Procter & Gamble advanced a provocative set of ideas around what it called the first and second moments of truth. Thanks to some savvy and persistent promotion, the terminology caught on fast:
- FMOT, the first moment, refers to the brief period when a shopper selects a desired product in the store.
- SMOT, the second moment, refers to the at-home consumption experience associated with that product.
Within the then-nascent Shopper Marketing community, this framework was a minor revelation. For brand marketers, FMOT gave credence to the argument that real marketing persuasion needed to be extended from measured media into the shopping environment. The store, it was discovered, shelters a separate marketing reality, where purchase decisions are made.
...
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Pay Cycles: When Month Outlasts Money

0 comments 1,067 reads

Posted on 2011-07-21

I was struck to read comments a couple of months ago by Walmart CEO Mike Duke who stated that the chain's shoppers seemed lately to be running out of money in the waning days of the month. He cited the shrinking size of market baskets as evidence. Tough times leading to tough choices.
Separate recent reports about the worrisome state of our consumer economy observe that budget-conscious shoppers tend lately to purchase smaller package sizes near the end of their pay. This, of course, is a key contributing factor to smaller baskets. William Simon, Walmart U.S. stores chief, made reference to this "paycheck cycle" at a recent analyst meeting.

This morning a report in Bloomberg News...

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The Epsilon Imperative

0 comments 811 reads

Posted on 2011-04-07

In what some observers say was the largest breech of consumer data in history, this week servers at Epsilon Interactive, a database services company based in Irving, TX, were compromised by hackers, exposing the names and email addresses of millions of American consumers to the spam-o-sphere.
Within hours, alerts hit my personal inbox from Kroger, Target, Walgreen and HiltonHHonors informing me that they had been struck and that one of my addresses was now in the wild. Why did these gigantic companies have my email address stored in Epsilon servers? Simple. I am enrolled in their frequent shopper programs. And until now, Epsilon was as reputable and secure a place as you could get to host your customer data.

Which partly explains why the 50 or so huge retail and consumer-facing companies whose customer email lists were exposed by this attack include the likes of Best Buy, HSN, CapitalOne, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Marriott and TiVo. These companies depend on email...

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Social Media? - Nah, It's Personal

1 comments 1,453 reads

Posted on 2011-01-25

All the recent chatter about "social media for business" is driving me around the bend.
For some time now, I've been searching for a terminology that would rescue us from imprecision and allow a meaningful business conversation to take place around the impact of smart phones within the retail environment.
At the National Retail Federation Conference and Expo two weeks ago in New York, the presentations and pitches frequently turned to the impact of social and mobile media, and I kept cringing every time I heard it. Here's why it bugs me so much:
When new business phenomena have arisen in retail marketing, sloppy terminology frequently led to poor initial understanding of the business opportunity. Often it is due to a choice of words laden with confusing prior connotation – or the absence of a suitable term.
We sometimes used "consumer" and "shopper" interchangeably; now we distinguish between those two customer...

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What Constitutes Compliance?

0 comments 1,062 reads

Posted on 2010-11-03

In my role as Director of the In-Store Implementation Network, the challenge of merchandising compliance is frequently addressed, from a variety of perspectives - both theoretical and solution-oriented.
Several recent conversations have centered on the question of measuring the accuracy of a shelf set; that is, its degree of compliance with the schematic or planogram. This is actually a non-trivial matter when seeking a practical solution. Since a planogram is a complex tool covering many details (items, facings, positioning, quantities, etc.) determining what data to measure, how often and to what end(s) requires a thoughtful process.
Our valued colleague Mike Spindler, CEO of ShelfSnap has championed this discussion in several items posted on the ISI Network LinkedIn Group...

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SCAMP: Five Pillars of Shopper Experience

1 comments 2,867 reads

Posted on 2010-02-12

I had an invitation recently to address an executive summit on Shopper Experience on the subject of In-Store Implementation. Regrettably, the event did not materialize, but the thought process it inspired could not be stopped. I decided to capture some of it here in the Tirades.

But first, are you experienced?

If you have ever shopped, of course you are. Shopper Experience is one of those big ideas that is hard to define because it encompasses everything we encounter in connection with a retail shopping visit. It begins with the traffic on the drive to the store, takes in the sights, sounds and smells of the store environment, and layers on the actions that take place while we are there. It probably even extends to the drive home and the interaction with purchased products.

Wikipedia defines it this way: "Customer experience is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the duration of their relationship with that...

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The New Voxology

0 comments 1,258 reads

Posted on 2010-02-06

Is "Social Media for Business" an oxymoron?
One current LinkedIn Groups discussion loudly and repetitively (2,500 posts and counting!) declares it "CRAP." I think this oversimplifies what has become a marketing imperative, and clouds a very important opportunity.

As new marketing verbs like tweet, blog, and social networking permeate our thinking, we need to acquire a clarifying thought vocabulary that will allow us to grapple with emerging concepts and put the tools to appropriate and beneficial use. I'll take a first whack at it here. Perhaps some wise readers can build on these ideas.

For starters, it would be helpful to differentiate between the kinds of activities that take place within online social media constructs. I group them into four familiar...

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