One of the few advantages of being a student of the food industry (and a few years older the the median age of its current leadership) is the ability to draw upon perspectives of those who made remarkable contributions to whatever level of success that industry has enjoyed.
Like many of my generation, I cherish memories of relationships with key individuals, including mentors. My list is short, but Glen Terbeek is at the top. For those unfamiliar with Glen, his career spanned decades with leading retail-focused companies. Now retired, but he remains sharply opinionated about today’s retail landscape. I’ve had the pleasure of discussing retail issues with him on several occasions.
During his time with Andersen Consulting (Accenture), Glen forged relationships with the top food retailers and the biggest CPG brands in the world. His forward thinking earned him the honor of developing and managing the Smart Store that showcased the applications of the latest technology and innovation in retailing, with store one being in the U.S. and the other in Europe.
Glen was truly visionary. In his 1999 book, The Agentry Agenda, he accurately foresaw technology empowering shoppers with greater control over their retail purchases. He proactively proposed a formula to streamline the retail ecosystem, eliminating wasteful middlemen and costs, which are often borne by shoppers at checkout.
My good friend and mentor, Herb Sorensen is also a fan of Glen and created a great recap of Glen’s thinking in The Three Minds of Retail. The link below will take there.
https://shopperscientist.com/2021-08-03.html
The larger importance of remembering Glen’s work is that 25 years after his book, the technology needed to streamline the process of manufacturing, shipping, and selling product at retail is now readily available, which it was not twenty some years ago. Equally as important is that the CPG-Retailer-Shopper ecosystem still needs considerable fine-tuning. With a plethora of new technologies, media and other options available to the shopper, retailing must find a balance between offering more choices and shopper engagement tools, and making those choices efficient and shopper centric.
As retail media networks continue to unfold before our eyes, it will be interesting to see if it is deployed as an “agent“ for improving the shopper expereince or yet another layer of interaction that places much of the onus on shoppers to navigate.
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