So Much Juicy Data!!

The New Marketing Leader has a ton of challenges (and fun) awaiting ... but maybe the most important challenge awaits in understand what role the merchandising team played in the demise of the prior marketing leader.

In that process, the New Marketing Leader learns a ton about how merchandise strategy evolved.

Look at this example ... look down the "Quarter" column ... we can see how many new items were introduced in each quarter behaved (or are predicted to behave) over time.

Your merchandising team executed a highly inconsistent strategy, didn't they?

We'll be able to digest information from this table all week, but let's begin by looking at new items. Read down the "Items" column. Tell me what you see??

• By quarter, there were between 129 new items per quarter and 377 new items per quarter through 25-27 months ago.
• Then, somebody in the merchandising division decided that newness was a bad idea ... new items dropped from 273 to 106 to 52 to 45 to 25 in the quarter ending 13-15 months ago.
• Then, somebody in the merchandising division decided that newness was a GOOD idea ... new items increased from 25 to 149 to 631 7-9 months ago.

This type of wild behavior happens all the time ... and IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE MARKETER!!!!

Yes, marketers lose their job because of these issues all the time. But the marketer doesn't have to lose their job all the time ... or ever.

Spend some time analyzing merchandising issues.

Tomorrow, we'll dig more into this table, because there's so much juicy data there!!!