The purpose of this article is to unpack the steps on how to run brand profiling within the DotActiv software.
Brand profiling is the process of placing the brand within a certain category based on its average price and brand image.
The purpose of this is to ensure that we are aware of the mixture of brands we place in any given category at any given time and align the brand profile composition with the cluster profile composition when completing assortment planning.
Applicable Products: DotActiv Enterprise
Ensure that you are working on a database before continuing with the following steps.
To log in to a database, open the DotActiv software. Select the applicable configuration, untick the ‘No Database’ box, enter the relevant details and click ‘OK’, as seen below.
Brand Profiling is a DotActiv Enterprise feature which means that it works connected to a database. If brand profiling has never been done in your environment before, a task will need to be logged for the IT Support team to set up the brand profiling script to run on your database at a scheduled interval. In order to do this the brand, average retail selling price, size and UOM fields need to be populated.
How To Run Brand Profiling
Automated Software Brand Profiling
Brand profiling is category specific. A scheduled script runs on the database every day that profiles brands into economy, standard and premium using average retail price. Brand profiling can be retrieved by clicking on ‘File’, then ‘Setup’ and lastly, ‘Brand Profiles’. It is important to note that this script can only run accurately if the following fields have been populated for every product:
- Category
- Brand
- EQ Size (Product Size and UOM are needed for this calculation)
- EQ Uom (Product Size and UOM are needed for this calculation)
- Current Price (Price per product unit)
- Price per Unit (Price/EQ Size)
If one of these fields is not completed, the script will not allocate a profile to the specific product. You will then have to manually change it in ‘Brand Profiles Setup’. Anything changed here will override what the script does.
This is done using a calculation that involves equivalence volume. What this means is that the price per UOM is calculated per ml or gram as an example to account for pack sizes. The software calculates the average price per brand and finds a midpoint.
Brands that fall 20% above this midpoint are classified as premium and brands that fall 20% below this mid-point are classified as economy.
Manual Brand Profiling
Manual Brand Profiling will never be as accurate as Automated Software Brand Profiling. It is a mere solution when the user isn’t using the software. It is strongly advised that Brand Profiling is conducted by means of the software to ensure accuracy and high-quality results based on the automated script.
Brand profiling can be done manually by running and extracting a data cube and calculating it in an Excel document. Blank fields can be updated by running and extracting the Brand Profiling data cube and then populating it manually. Thereafter, the CSV/Excel sheet can be dragged into the database to update the blank Brand Profile fields.
For an in-depth guide, please see Step 4: Prepare The Brand Profile Grid Layout in the following article: (2.5) Formulating Suggested Clustering Performance Objectives.
Confirm Brand Profiling
The software does not take the brand image into account, brand image refers to the image a brand holds in the consumer’s mind. That is why it is important to confirm brand profiling with your client.
Those that work with the category on a daily basis have expert knowledge of how each brand is positioned in the market it is of vital importance to highlight the brand profiles to them and ask them to take their time to confirm that they agree with the profiling.
If your client changes the brand profiling, be sure to go back to the brand profiling feature and add in brand overrides.
In the event of needing the script to run outside of its normal schedule, you will need to contact the IT Support Team and ask them to run it for you.
Troubleshooting
In some instances, different brand profiling terms could be used. For instance, Mid-Tier or Standard. Follow the steps below to ensure that the correct information pulls through to your report.
- First, check the data source of your grid. Double-click on the grid > Data Source > Add/Edit > Click on the data cube > Edit > Check the cube name and make sure it is the correct one > Ok > Close
- Then go to Setup > Set Filters > Brand Profile, Equal and select profile
- Save the template (DRT) and refresh the report for the changes to reflect.
Please note, that this will only work if you have included the Brand Profiles in your data cube.
