Market Overview: Trade Promotion Management

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands spend more than $500 billion on trade promotions annually and estimate that a third of that spend generates negative returns. To drive new product introduction in order to win, serve, and retain consumers throughout the customer life cycle, brands need an applications portfolio that enables effective planning and execution with retail channel partners. AD&D professionals at CPG brands face the dilemma of deciding how much enterprisewide trade promotion functionality they can manage in their ERP backbone and how much they should manage via point solutions or collaborative platforms. They must also decide how to embrace digital in-store and direct-to-consumer technologies, manage trade promotions more effectively, and reconcile potential conflicts between their marketing and sales constituencies. Forrester interviewed 15 brands and vendors to deliver an overview of the market for trade promotion solutions and recommendations for AD&D professionals.