Supermarket product selection uncovered: manufacturer promotions and the channel intermediary

In 1998, food and packaged goods manufacturers presented 17,977 new items for evaluation by channel intermediaries (grocery buyers, merchandisers, and category managers). This product selection process is recognized as a time and labor intensive effort on the part of manufacturers and their retail counterparts. Ultimately, only one-third of these new product introductions may be accepted for distribution. Thus, manufacturers may benefit from increased insight to the channel intermediary’s criteria for deciding which products to stock in their retail stores. It is suggested that this decision may be influenced by the presence of certain promotional and cash offerings, and this issue is examined in a logistic regression.