The purpose of this paper is to alert Consumer Package Goods (CPG) management to the growing importance of the Category Management function and to the need to allocate appropriate resources, both human and technological, to your Category Management function to ensure brand and corporate growth in the era of ‘big data’ and shopper marketing.

Mastering Category Management is critical to your company’s growth because Category Management addresses the three most important trends of the millennium:

• The ever increasing power of retailers who focus on growing CATEGORIES instead of BRANDS.
• The digital empowerment of shoppers who seek need state satisfaction at the CATEGORY level.
• 'Big data’s' propensity to yield its most valuable insights at the CATEGORY level.

Mastering Category Management addresses these trends by:

• Ensuring you speak your customer’s language of category growth.
• Assuring you speak your shopper’s language of category satisfaction.
• Organizing big data at the category level where insights naturally emerge.

 
This paper describes how companie s progress towards Category Management mastery by following a maturity curve comprised of four complementary components.