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Category Management
Categories help the Merchandising and Retail Manager group the different products and services offered onboard by affinity of use or consumption, popularity, specific time when they are offered, specific service or product brand name, or other merchandising and purchasing reasons. Sample categories include: Gifts, Food & Beverage, Kids Toys, Electronics, OB Personal Entertainment, Ground Transportation Vouchers, Events & Theatre Tickets, and Perfumes & Skin Care.
Products or services can be offered physically onboard or virtually by means of onboard ordering and paying with later delivery, or online access, either within the onboard local network or onboard Internet access. The operator may define, maintain and modify these groupings into merchandising categories, which may then match the onboard printed catalogue categories, as well as the products/services loaded into the handheld POS device. Another important categorization is the Onboard Services categorization, which enables to link different services offered onboard with the sequence in which they are delivered during the trip. Products inventoried in the system have also definable sub-categories.
Assortment Planning
Assortments or combinations of products and or services may form a specific inventory or be part of a specific inventory standard that is adapted to a specific market, specific time, or route profile. The assortment includes the definition of the combination of categories of product or services and can include the quantities or relational percentage between them.
The Assortment Planning module helps operators to map and adapt their Mobile Virtual Store™ demand profile to the schedule of operations and later analyze sales by each Mobile Virtual Store™ type. The module offers a powerful Planning Criteria engine to automatically plan assortments for the next schedule(s) using business rules.
This module also includes Demand Analysis & Store Optimization which enables merchandisers to optimize the revenue and profit of each Planned Load Plan by taking historical analysis of product consumption by defined and loaded assortment, and use it to create "what If" scenarios to estimate consumption, revenue and profit using more efficient assortments. The efficiency of an assortment for a specific galley type is measured by the relationship between volume-weight and revenue or volume-weight and profit. The merchandiser can immediately see the "what-if" result of applying a historically more efficient assortment to a specific departure or group of departures, based on origin/destination, or destination market, day-of-the-week, and time-of-the-day.
Promotions Management
The Sales Promotions software module can increase sales, reduce waste, promote new products and services, balance the demand of high profit and low profit items, increase or renew awareness and increase revenue. The underlying engine enables marketers and merchandisers to define and plan any imaginable combination of Purchase Condition and Benefit. The options include BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) to BMGM (Buy More, Get More), to sophisticated Meal Deals and Combos with very complex logic that include selections through various categories with alternatives and exceptions.
One of most useful features is the automatic discount of any perishable items onboard from a certain time of the day on, which helps protect the profitability of onboard food sales. The engine can define Buyers and allow discounts or other promotions to crew members, employees or any other Passenger-Guests. The Planning Criteria Engine is reused in this module to establish parameters and Planning Rules to associate promotions with departures or routing profiles.
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