Decision Trees

Phil: The CMA and CMA hosted a webinar with Vista Grande to discuss the current use and relevancy of decision trees in Shopper Insights and category management work. The idea that all CDT's have a shelf life of 5 to 7 years is just silly. Updates are needed based on specific dynamics of the category of each category and likely more frequent, especially in categories like plant based meat and beyond beer and beverages. Let's hear more on updating your decision trees. Members of the CMA can access the full replay of the webinar in the resource library. Nonmembers can visit Catman Global to contact the association about membership.

Rush: Another thing I hear all the time is how often should I do my decision trees? The last one I have is five years old. Eight years old. Ten years old. I heard that the rule of thumb is it's got a 5 to 7 year shelf life. I just think that's silly. Okay, so here's my depiction of shelf life.  It's somewhere in between Sushi and Twinkies. Okay. But don't worry about the rule of thumb. I think this rule of thumb has been established, unfortunately, because, A, the client didn't get a value out of the last study and don't really relish doing it again. Maybe it was too expensive and they get enough out of it, or they did it just to satisfy a retailer.  But they didn't really care. Wasn't for them. And so it was kind of not optimizing its value. The work we're doing, I don't know, based on our clients reaction, they're coming back more frequently. They're talking about updates there. We have done several categories on repeat basis or some talk about annual subscription. So, you know, you can't just make a blanket statement of like you should do it every 5 to 7 years.  Think of what the world was looking like three years ago compared to today and where we've been. So it really depends on what's going on out in the world, what's going on in your category. Some categories like you know, plant based meat alternatives or, you know, beer beyond beer beverages are just so dynamic that you got to keep your finger on the pulse.