Market evolution – Where? How?

In the last 6 months retailers and FMCG people are crazy to find out facts and figures about the market evolution and its trends. Everybody wants to know if this crisis is finished, which will be the post – crisis effects, how the consumer was affected and how is looking now the shopping list. Few days ago, a new conference for retailers and FMCG done by an online platform comerciantul.ro raised up a lot of questions about the Romanian consumer and shopper. It seems that all managers and specialists are hungry about market data and insights, Nielsen survey presented was just a hint, but not enough. I saw people writting down the figures and the charts conclusions and  showing a wondering face like „ ok...and now what to do?”.

Let’s take it step by step. First of all I remember 5-6 years ago when Romanian market was a paradise for modern retailers and when nobody payed attention to surveys and figures, everything was going just perfect, the sales forecasts were all the time realized and even more – shareholders and managers were simply happy. In the meetings, the power points were showing only good sales results, new projects, expansion plans, stores openings campaigns – who cared about basic things? In that period when I was saying in a meeting words as „market size”, „competition”, „unemployment”, „ economical data” etc my superiors and my colleagues were looking at me a little bit strange and especially my power points presentations were very unpopular and I was all the time kindly asked to „move a little bit faster on these slides...”.

In 2007, looking in the statistical data and in a study done about natality I was a little bit suprised in a negative way. Romania was not at all so „pink” as foreign investors were thinking. Also agriculture data were showing that this country is not able to cover the minimum needs of its population...even if the geographical condition is great for that. I also checked some data about urban localities and the degree of modernization in this area was very poor. What about black market....this one is growing and never stopped to grow even today.

Some months after this „revelation”, one of my superiors was asking me to do some market estimations and so on. I was happy to show my knowledge, but sad because I knew waht will be the follow-up...a never ending wave of questions and unfortunatelly no concrete action plan, no adaptation – why is the market in this stage? What is the forecast for the next years? People will buy less? From where they will buy more – discounters or convenience store? Which are the advantages of black market? Etc etc.

I can say now that it is very simple to see all this market movementa if you keep your both legs on the ground and just look with moderation and patience in all data available.

There are a lot of data who are public and for free: the National Institute of Statistics, the National Bank, the Eurostat data – how often do you really see these data?

My opinion about the Romanian market evolution in the next 5 years is based on all data that I read lately and I see 3 trends:

-          „humanization” – consumers and shoppers will become human, that means they will not buy anymore like crazy and for the fun of shopping and they will think more to their comfort as human beeing;

-          „segmentation” – finally each store format have to do what it is in its nature to do – a hypermarket have to be a hypermarket, a discounter have to act as a discounter and so on and each segment of the market will be obliged to focus on its main shopper and to respect this shopper

-          „consolidation” – the existing business will focus on present in order to be able to survive and even to have the first money as profit in the next period, they will keep the past in a archive and they will be realistic on their development plans who will be more static and analytical.

Good news – Romanians like the excess in their lifestyle and the exageration in their consumption, but one by one, first they have to find the ressources to eat well before the next steps as buying a lot of clothing , white goods and nice cars.

So, go back to the basic! The market needs to reanimate its ressources.