Perfect Shelf solution for General Mills

An innovative “Perfect Shelf” solution is being used by General Mills France to bring across its new merchandising strategy for its Häagen-Dazs premium ice-cream.

Backed by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform by Dassault Systèmes, Perfect Shelf helps General Mills, one of the world’s leading food companies, to demonstrate category merchandising expertise to retailers by recommending shelving scenarios, based on shopper research, that enhance its brand and increase the retailer’s category revenue.

The new approach enables the company to better collaborate with retailers while improving the consumer shopping experience and accelerating brand growth. This is particularly essential in a product category like ice-cream that is driven very much by impulse buying.

Studies show that out of 120 product categories, ice cream is the 27th most impulsive purchase. As a result, its market growth depends heavily on product innovation — new flavours, new formats — and on strategic store aisle placement, shelving and product visibility to stimulate consumer purchases.

Perfect Shelf brings a new and innovative dimension to this category management.

“With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, the shopping experience design process is more collaborative and takes place significantly faster, with greater extent and flexibility, and at lower cost,” said Philippe Loeb, vice-president, Consumer Packaged Goods & Retail Industry, Dassault Systèmes.

In March last year, General Mills France had launched ice-cream stick bars in five flavours, and wanted a powerful category management solution to support the project.

Perfect Shelf enabled the company to leverage advanced, cloud-based 3D modelling and visualisation applications to collaborate with mass-market retailers to provide realistic views of store aisles, including shelves, fixtures, products, lighting and promotional materials, along with an immersive shopping experience for consumers.

In this 3DEXPERIENCE universe, changes and approvals of assortment, product positioning, signage and promotional displays are made in real time, facilitating how they collaborate.