Market positioning for success

By Roger E. Peterson President Ace Hardware CorP.

T ug INTENSIT!' and diversity

I of competition in today's hardlines industry has created a greater need than ever for hardware/ home center retailers to make a strong, positive statement in their market. This need will continue to increase, along with competi-tion, into the 1990s.

The competi- tion that hardlines dealers face today is different from that of the past. It includes not only the more traditional hardline retailers, but also the giant warehouse retailers competing against each other, wholesale clubs, catalog sales, tv home shopping clubs, buying clubs and specialtY retailers, as well as other retailers who merely "dabble" in the sale of hardware related products.

According to industry studies, doit-yourselfers comprise the largest segment of all retail customer makeup. and that trend will continue to iricrease in the future. However, there are other consumer groups which dealers in our industry need to address more aggressively in order to achieve full market share. These irrclude women as well as commercial/industrial customers, and each has special individual needs. To attract these customers to their stores effectively, retailers need the total support of their distributor.

Although there are common needs throughout the various retail markets, retailers in each region of the country have unique needs which the distributor must understand in order to offer total retail support. The regionalization concept helps distributors develop a greater a\\/areness of the make-up of their individual dealers' markets. For regionalization to be effective. dealers and their distributors