The L.E.K. Consulting Consumer Sentiment Survey (CSS) has identified shifts in consumer attitudes and spending behaviors that have important ramifications for retailers. Key findings include a significant uptick in affluent consumer spending and optimism, insight into major drivers of purchasing decisions, and shifting online commerce expectations.
L.E.K. Consulting believes that airlines must evolve their business strategies to transform ancillary offerings into sophisticated merchandising programs that can be tailored to individual consumer preferences. L.E.K. details how airlines can develop effective merchandising offerings that create new revenue opportunities – and also provides airline merchandising market projections in the U.S. and globally.
In L.E.K.'s Retail and Consumer Products practice, we see the difficulty that some consumer products goods (CPG) companies have succeeding in the warehouse club channel. Warehouse club retailers have expanded the value-pricing model by providing members with access to food, electronics and other packaged goods in bulk and at sizeable discounts. The warehouse club channel is now big business with Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club collectively earning an estimated $114 billion in U.S. revenues during the 2009 calendar year. In this article, L.E.K. has outlined common missteps - and associated best practices - for CPG companies to capitalize on the warehouse club channel.
The L.E.K. Consulting Hospital Purchasing Survey reveals that U.S. hospital executives are using sophisticated strategies to cut overall budgets, make targeted investments in specific departments, emphasize patient safety and prepare for the ramifications of new healthcare legislation. The L.E.K. study highlights critical implications for medical device and life sciences companies, equipment manufacturers, service providers, and technology vendors.
L.E.K.'s research shows that too many rewards programs are poorly conceived – resulting in initiatives that don’t meet retailers’goals and loyalty cards that are passively exploited by consumers. Therefore, retailers must continually re-evaluate the effectiveness of their rewards programs to determine if they are generating true value or simply becoming ill-defined cost centers.To address these issues, L.E.K. has outlined steps that retailers can take to determine whether their programs are creating effective customer engagements and fostering long-term relationships.
Given the significant pressures facing the building materials industry today, it has never been more important for manufacturers to improve cost positions relative to their competitors and have a strategy to achieve appropriate cost targets. L.E.K. Consulting has developed a proven cost benchmarking solution that is based on developing delivered cost supply curves for a specific market and modeling changes in your supply, your demand, and competitors' initiatives to quantify production cost targets.
