The right product, the right place, the right time, the right price and the right quantity.

Consider the usual definition of “merchandising”. For decades, the corner grocer has been slowly transforming into a self-service operation over time in an almost scientific manner.

It must be stated that, with the explosion of competing brands and modern business needs in all areas of commerce, there is a great risk of loss and/or failure unless a minimum degree of order and organisation is maintained.

This is even truer in a hypermarket where there are often 60,000 to 80,000 SKUs (product types) all of which must be placed in a multitude of aisles and on hundreds of shelves. But how? Imagine our poor grocer of yester-year, could he accommodate all this? Probably not!

Profitability can only be maintained by extensive analysis of the positioning of products on shelves, the variety of stock, the quantity of product per “SKU”, etc.

Once upon a time...

A recurring issue in retail distribution and industry is how to evaluate in-store marketing for large-scale commercial operations and be certain that it will have the desired impact on sales. It is just such a typical, yet crucial question facing marketing and business departments that launched a project called “ActiSKU” 4 years ago. “SKU” is mass distribution jargon for a “product type”. In 2006, a manager with Carlsberg, a brewer present in more than thirty countries, met with ACTIPLAY, a company specialised in the production of 2D and 3D, real-time advergames… that is, video games and advertising sites!

What was the link between these two? Only that the brewer had an idea in mind, and specific needs, and ACTIPLAY mastered 3D technology. Nothing more was needed to launch an effective project between ambitious, visionary partners.

In a market where everything must be tested (packaging, prices, in-store ads, installations, designs, etc.) with increasing reduced time frames and budgets, a research agency or department must be able to provide new methodologies in order to maintain their margins.

It is possible to call upon a subcontractor to bring his expertise in creating a trial-environment survey.

In this case the subcontractor (possibly a competitor) keeps the exclusivity of the implementation and reduces your margins. In addition to the time spent explaining your needs to the subcontractor is a terrible waste.

The ActiSKU suite was created specifically to save time and allow a research company or service to master the complete survey process, from the design of virtual test environments, to the launch of the operation, without requiring any specialised IT knowledge.

Today, 3D is flooding homes via video games, it is also used in the industry to obtain quick, low-cost solutions for technical, marketing and ergonomic issues.

The automotive sector uses 3D simulators to analyse the behaviour of drivers, the army uses 3D combat simulators to examine the behaviour of soldiers, various situations and research groups use ActiSKU to study the behaviour of consumers as they face various marketing options.

3D simulation immerses individuals into various environments and the individual adopts the same attitudes that he would in a similar real-life situation. If you were in a video game, driving a vehicle down a road and approached a bend in the road, would you continue straight into a wall?

Concrete example: online surveys performed (since 2007) by a Carlsberg Group research department using ActiSKU have shown a correlation of more than 90% with data collected in stores (purchased products).