Trade promotion spending is the second largest line item on a major consumer products company’s financials, yet it continues to fail to generate positive ROI more than half of the time. This book provides a detailed road map for how to reverse that failure and achieve near-100% ROI with dramatically higher value consumer engagement.

This is the first book to fully and comprehensively address the problems consumer products manufacturers and retailers have with breaking the cycle of failure of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on trade channel promotions, negatively impacting revenue growth and consumer engagement. It changes the current paradigm of thought and purpose from a pure business-to-business value proposition to one that centers the consumer as the primary focal point and purpose for every promotion.

The entire cycle of a consumer purchase process, beginning with the identification of a need all the way through the purchase and post-purchase satisfaction and the growth of product loyalty. This definition of a consumer chain takes each step or link in that chain and details how modern trade promotion strategic and tactical actions can impact and influence the ultimate buying and loyalty decisions. The new strategic direction the book presents combines the traditional aspects of tactical business-to-business trade promotion execution with a more targeted strategy aimed directly at each step of the purchase process a consumer takes.

The Invisible Economy of Consumer Engagement begins with a historical accounting of the genesis of modern trade channel promotion and establishes a clear understanding of how and why consumer products companies manage, execute and measure trade promotion today. Through the prism of history and the evolving consumer buying behaviors, the book identifies the root causes resulting in failed promotions and offers a realistic and well-founded series of steps which must be taken to improve trade promotion fund management, account and promotion planning, channel promotion execution, and analysis. It is a powerful road map for the improvement of process, technology, data, and performance analysis of the huge amounts of money spent on retailer trade promotions.

In this book, the author, Rob Hand, leverages his 45-year consumer products and trade promotion knowledge and experience to show how any consumer products manufacturer can move through four dimensions of knowledge to achieve near 100% positive ROI on every trade promotion, eliminate the problem of empty shelves during product promotions, increase the quality and value of data, and ultimately generate the ability to effectively predict and prescribe promotions that deliver higher value consumer engagement and revenue results for both themselves as well as their distribution channel partners.

The book addresses the evolving technology of artificial intelligence-driven predictive and prescriptive analytics, advanced technology like the Internet of Things, blockchain, and how to improve the value, quality, and trustworthiness of all data. With interviews and statements from senior sales, marketing, finance, and IT executives from the world’s top consumer goods companies and retailers, this book brings together an excellent combination of domain expertise and technical direction to establish a framework for future trade promotion management, execution and analysis designed to meet the rigors and pressures presented by modern omnichannel consumer engagement.

The Invisible Economy of Consumer Engagement is a must-read for anyone working at any level of a consumer products or retail company’s marketing, sales, trade promotion, revenue growth management, supply chain, IT and financial organizations. It should also be required reading for university students studying these disciplines.