Apparel Retailer Expects Robust Results from Pricing and Promotions Roadmap

This client is a $1B+ multi-channel, multi-banner specialty retailer offering women’s and men’s fashion and home furnishings. While undergoing a strategic evolution from a catalog to an e-commerce business model, the retailer was also facing increased business risk and heightened competition. To combat these forces, company leadership recognized the need to standardize and update their overall pricing strategy, while defining the processes and policies related to setting regular, clearance, and promotional prices across multiple banners.​

Parker Avery’s objective was to help the company drive increased revenue, improved margins, and greater operational efficiency by defining future-state pricing and promotional capabilities. Parker Avery developed a detailed capabilities roadmap to prioritize and sequence the specific identified initiatives.

Parker Avery performed an in-depth current-state analysis to understand existing pricing and promotion capabilities across people, processes, and technology, as well as fully comprehend the company’s operating model. The team benchmarked the client’s pricing capabilities against leading practices, which served as input to prioritizing the opportunities.

Initiatives to support future-state capabilities included:

• Define consistent pricing terms across banners
• Incorporate pricing into strategic planning and standard meeting structures
• Clarify/define regular pricing, promotional, and markdown processes, policies, roles, and responsibilities​
• Perform a regular price elasticity study
• Refine brand positioning
• Improve and standardize promotional analysis​
• Select and implement price, markdown, and promotional optimization tool​s
• Develop event forecasting capability​
• Define the strategic promotions process ​and refine the promotion calendar

Parker Avery presented recommendations with a three-year horizon, including short-term quick wins, medium-term objectives, and long-term visions, as well as a high-level assessment of implementation impacts and business benefits.