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 whatever level of success that industry has enjoyed.
Like many of my generation, we can look back fondly on the relationships with certain individuals, even mentors. My list is not that long, but right at the top of it is Glen Terbeek. For those that are not familiar with Glen and his career, it emcompassed several decades with some of the best thought-leading companies in retailing.
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.
Without coming close to hyperbole, Glen was way ahead of his time. His book, the Agentry Agenda published in 1999, specifically predicted that technology would enable shoppers to have much more control over how and where they purchased their retailing needs. He also spelled out a specific formula that he advocated to take the waste, the array of middle men brokers and costs out of an efficient ecosystem that is subsidized largely by the shopper at the checkout.
My good friend and mentor, Herb Sorensen 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 a major overhaul, if the consumer is to be rewarded for wading through large stores, often cluttered with inventory of products that rarely are on any shopping list.
As retail media continues to unfold before our eyes, it will be interesting to see if it is deployed as a shopper-centric tool to allow for a more efficient purchase process, which was the goal of Glen’s writings, or will it be another flavor of the same system that supports the needs of the brands and retailers that still requires the shopper to do much of the work, particularly in-store.
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