About the CMA
Convenience retailers focused on talent development, networking with industry peers or looking for leading-edge research can all benefit from a relationship with the Category Management Association (CMA).
The CMA, a professional association, exists to help its members drive meaningful category and brand growth by building shopper-satisfaction heroes and facilitating strategic collaboration between retailers, suppliers and their solution providers in:
- Category management
- Shopper insights & marketing
- Planogram & space management
- In-store execution & merchandising
The CMA team is dedicated to raising the bar among participating practitioners irrespective of trade channel, level of experience or data availability.
READ MORE ABOUT THE CMA:
View the full Category Management Handbook
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Evaluating E-Learning: Choosing the Right Solution
Planogram Development: Advanced Category Roadmap
View the full Category Management Handbook
CMA Events
CMA events and activities have proven to be ideal forums to meet peers, collaborate and exchange ideas in a noncompetitive, highly respected environment.
The CMA hosts a variety of targeted events on an annual, monthly and weekly basis to keep its members and professionals up to date on the latest trends, industry news and new approaches.
CMA events and activities include:
Annual conferences: The annual CMA Conference is a collaborative environment and hosts a blend of keynote speakers, case studies presented by retailers and manufacturers, panel discussions, networking, solution-provider speed demonstrations and fun.
Webinar series: For retailers interested in insights and analytics, shopper marketing, space management or intellectual property, there is a fitting monthly webinar. Experts and guest topic leaders deliver fresh content to keep members informed with fresh and useful content.
Private-networking groups: CMA members expressed the desire to interact with peers in their own industry to dig deeper into and discuss highly specialized topics. Networking group users have direct contact with peers who want the same contact and can arrange their own sessions.
International chapters: Our international chapter meetings include participants such as industry experts, training partners and CPG (consumer packaged goods) manufacturers and retailers. These meetings allow members to discuss topics and approaches that are specifically relevant to the regions in which they do business.
READ MORE ABOUT THE CMA:
View the full Category Management Handbook
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Evaluating E-Learning: Choosing the Right Solution
Planogram Development: Advanced Category Roadmap
CMA Membership
CMA membership enrolls organizations and its professionals into a global category-management community, which includes many of the top manufacturers, retailers, solution partners and universities.
Members and professionals have the opportunity to help define the function and strategy, shape industry standards and best practices, create innovations and drive talent development. Members also have access to a variety of benefits and resources to help with the daily business needs for category management, shopper insights and marketing, plan-o-gram and space management and in-store execution and marketing.
- Retailer membership demonstrates to trade partners a commitment to best practices within the retail landscape, as well as drives high standards in service.
- Membership as a manufacturer showcases the member organization as dedicated to offering trade partners the most advantageous business support.
- Solution providers who are CMA corporate members are able to present product and service overviews in sessions with CMA manufacturer and retailer members.
READ MORE ABOUT THE CMA:
View the full Category Management Handbook
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Evaluating E-Learning: Choosing the Right Solution
Planogram Development: Advanced Category Roadmap
CMA Certification
The CMA Certification Program been embraced by the category-management industry and resonates with both the retailer and manufacturing community.
The reason this program has been so readily accepted is because it is the result of a collaborative effort between manufacturers, retailers, brokers and training organizations to establish and communicate the standards necessary to support the development of a more professional category management community.
The certification program is a remarkable achievement as cooperation of this type, between these communities, to the extent necessary to implement this industrywide certification program, rarely occurs. The importance of this program is that it identifies the core skills or competencies necessary to evaluate and improve the professional capabilities of all constituents in the category management community.
The benefits to all parties for certification and the standards are clear.
- First it serves as means to independently evaluate industry talent and delivers a message to employees of a company’s commitment to their personal development.
- Second, once your category management team is certified it provides a clear message to your business partners of the quality of the category management team supporting them.
- Finally certification is a statement of industry leadership and support of improving industry standards. The importance of certification is measured in the quality of collaboration it supports between retailer and manufacturer.
READ MORE ABOUT THE CMA:
View the full Category Management Handbook
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Evaluating E-Learning: Choosing the Right Solution
Planogram Development: Advanced Category Roadmap
Best Practices & Services
The services and solutions presented by the BPBU have been chosen and honed by individuals with unparalleled experience working for retailers, manufacturers and solution providers.
Members and professionals have the opportunity to help define the function and strategy, shape industry standards and best practices, create innovations and drive talent development. Members also have access to a variety of benefits and resources to help with the daily business needs for category management, shopper insights and marketing, plan-o-gram and space management, and in-store execution and marketing.
- Voice of the shopper: The voice of the shopper combines shopper marketing and consumer insights research, external partner research, retailer and syndicated data into a concise taxonomy.
- Ground work: Qualitative and quantitative research to develop groundbreaking shopper insights and fill in knowledge gaps to deliver a complete solution.
- Category reinvention: Seize the opportunity and identify actionable steps to grow your category, and test solutions sparked by voice of the shopper and ground work.
- Voice of the retailer: The voice of the retailer platform helps manufacturers create strategic relationships with multiple retail leaders.
READ MORE ABOUT THE CMA:
View the full Category Management Handbook
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Evaluating E-Learning: Choosing the Right Solution
Planogram Development: Advanced Category Roadmap
What is CatMan 2.0™?
Category management is one of the most successful business processes developed in the 20th century. It is used in one form or another globally by most manufacturers and retailers representing a variety of trade classes primarily within the consumer package goods industry.
The retail landscape has changed dramatically since the discipline of CatMan 1.0 was originally developed in the early 1990s. CatMan 2.0™ is category management for the 21st century. It represents the modification of the category-management discipline to address the following major changes in the industry:
- A more diverse shopper base – The shopper base has segmented into a collection of unique behaviors based on a consumer’s lifestyle and life stage.
- New retail formats – The growth of supercenters, dollar stores, deep discounters and online retailers.
- Data – New data sources including shopper insights, loyalty programs and social media.
- Analytical tools – New hardware and software solutions enable analytics with unprecedented speed and power, at the individual store and customer level.
- Success models – Learnings, case studies and knowledge about what works and doesn’t work.
Click here to learn more about the Category Management Association.
READ MORE ABOUT THE CMA:
View the full Category Management Handbook
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Evaluating E-Learning: Choosing the Right Solution
Planogram Development: Advanced Category Roadmap
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