Cross Purposes

Developing creative ways to group complementary products at retail is key to lifting sales and shopper satisfaction.

- Barbara Sax

Cross-merchandising is hardly a new concept. Yet many retailers fail to identify key opportunities to bring products together to boost sales and improve overall customer experience.

According to Marcia Schurer, president of Chicago-based Culinary Connections, creating a strategy for cross-merchandising complementary products is critical for boosting impulse purchases and increasing additional sales per shopping trip.

“Any cross-merchandising that encourages impulse buying should be a top priority for any retailer,” she says. “Once you get the customer in the store, you want to keep increasing that basket. Helping the consumer with their meal-planning efforts, and sampling items together so the customer can taste how well they complement each other, increases the chances of impulse buying.”

Jim Hertel, SVP at Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Inmar Analytics, believes that the value of effective cross-merchandising strategies goes beyond simply building baskets and traffic. He’s convinced that it’s necessary to a store’s positioning in an ever-crowded marketplace in which younger consumers are seeking an experiential shopping environment.

“The emerging consumer seeks convenience and new experiences, and crossmerchandising done well delivers on both,” Hertel notes. “Good cross-merchandising creates anticipation for shoppers who seek new and sophisticated eating and entertainment experiences, and helps a retailer surprise and delight the shopper, ultimately creating the kind of loyalty money can’t buy.”

The Most Bang for the Buck

Cross-merchandising programs that are most effective in building traffic and loyalty are those that help consumers find meal solutions.