Impact of Covid-19 on FMCG industry
This assignment will deal with the current trend analysis of the FMCG industry in the United Kingdom. The required skill set for the FMCG industry has been briefly and critically analyzed in the research work. The FMCG job advertisement will be addressed to analyze the criteria of the particular job role. Covid-19 has hit the health factor of human beings and affected many industries. This is high time to do career research for understanding the particular job criteria and the requirement of skill and expertise for a particular job (Gong et al. 2020). Being a graduate student, these skills and knowledge analysis will help me have a better career approach. The FMCG industry overview will provide me with practical exposure, and the current trends in the industry will help me keep updated with the industry news, and it will help me to gain more knowledge and expertise in the field.
The FMCG market stands as one of the highest industries in market share. Almost 749,807 FMCG organizations and London shares 22% of the FMCG industry (Singh 2020). Due to the Covid-19 scenario, the FMCG industry is adopting various new trends to keep the footprint of the customers in their store.
The covid-19 scenario has most accelerated the growth of the FMCG industry as the sector is got to introduce digitalization. Technological advancement has created greater scope for the FMCG industry, such as data analytics and Artificial Intelligence. The industry can have more excellent knowledge about their customer segment through data analytics in detail. The usage of data analytics helps the industry identify the risk association and, according to that, optimize the performance and lessen the cost involvement (Zaki et al. 2019). Modern AI technology has emerged that makes customer engagement a better way. The virtual assistance of AI can map the relationship with the single customers and predict their shopping attitude towards the brand in future. The usage of AI technology has lessened the manual inventory check for managing their warehouse management. The FMCG industry is currently using AI-driven merchandising as the tool kit in the FMCG sector. Companies can identify the customers’ demands before they could have acknowledged the needs (Kon?ar et al. 2020). Here, companies track the customer’s activity on social networking sites.
As per globalization’s impact on the FMCG industry, the companies focus on the new product innovation strategy to attract large customers. In earlier days, the industry tends to use its marketing channel to reach out to customers. Due to globalization, companies are now taking a holistic approach and making contracts with the delivery partner so their potential customers can avail themselves of that product within their convenience (Moosa and Jagadeesan 2020). Globalization has impacted customers’ perception, and they are taking healthy products as packaged goods. So, companies started focusing on the eco-friendly sustainable product category.
Every individual industry has some of the key skill requirements to work in a specific field. The organization in a specific sector primarily focuses on the skill sets and knowledge about that industry they seek from the applicants, be a fresher or an experience in the field. The skills and knowledge are described below:
Tactical Customer Insight
Adoption of digitalization and AI in FMCG industry
The marketer’s primary skill is looking for a candidate to become a customer-centric approach. Customer insight is the most crucial factor acknowledged over time and experience. The candidate has to be observant and curious about the current circumstances. Data analytics skills are also required, and one must have good grounding knowledge about sales (Koljonen 2021). As the FMCG industry mainly deals with the B2C segment, customer engagement is the essential skill rather than the commercial skills of the candidates.
A marketer and sales associate needs to be started with the stint in the field and the sales project; the marketer and salesperson need to build a good rapport with distributors, retailers, wholesalers of the organization as a marketer needs to address their concern and proactively resolve their issues by meeting them in person (Daulay and Saputra 2019). These can be the skills one can achieve by working at the ground level.
Man management is one of the essential skills required for the FMCG industry. The job role of sales person is working with a team of 5-6 members (Siagian, Jade and Tarigan 2020). The salesperson is responsible for defining each territories, and the salesperson is supposed to solve the queries and make strategies for each territory.
The FMCG industry is a fast-moving industry, and the employees of this industry need to take an instant decision and deliver prompt service to their customers and make strategies in the fast-paced industrial field (MEIYANI and Putra 2019). In real-life circumference, this skill set means that the candidate must have a broader range of abilities, including flexibility, adaptability, and organizational skills. Time management skills can be considered the prerequisite for applicants in the FMCG sector.
The FMCG sector has a continual process of new projects and technical skills to improvise the existing projects. But these FMCG plants are now getting automated. Hence the marketer is expected to be technically sound and more prowess to switch the working mode into the automated working process (Odwa?ny, Szyma?ska and Cyplik 2018). The candidate who can perform the automated process proficient will be in optimum demand. Thus, up-skilling has become more relevant in the FMCG field.
The industry does require a particular area of knowledge and expertise to smoothly handle the cross channel sales strategy of the FMCG sector. The area of knowledge and expertise are briefly described below:
In every organization in a particular sector, the employees need to have basic knowledge, and a clear conception of financial accounting as the company needs to calculate its P&L statement for their brand. The job role of salesperson demands the skill and expertise explicitly for financial accounting to identify the P&L statement of their selected territory (Beg 2018). CFI offered a particular course on financial accounting to understand various components and their applicability.
Merchandising is the essential criterion in the FMCG industry. Proper knowledge of merchandising displays the products correctly so that the company can earn and maximize their profit percentage by the available stock (Menon et al. 2019). Commercial awareness has to be the critical attribute. The marketer needs to have a commercial understanding to help the applicants do the competitor analysis and take strategies according to market demand.
Focus on sustainable products in FMCG industry
This part of the assignment has chosen the organization named Reckitt Benckiser. Reckitt Benckiser can be considered one of the biggest and largest FMCG brands all over the globe, and they have their operational plants in over 200 countries (Kuptsova, Maslennikov and Kalinina 2021). The organization mainly operates home, hygiene, and health care product segment. The main priority of the Reckitt Benckiser group is to increase the innovation quotient, and they have the highest rates of product launch in the market. RB is planning for diversifying its product portfolio, and they are working on the new launch of therapeutic drugs. Figure.2 (Appendix.2) portrays the job advertisement for different locations all over the globe. They are recruiting for several job designations. The leading job designation that Reckitt Benckiser is offering is sales person for their marketing and sales department. They have advertised for such job scheme for upgrading the knowledge and skills of the graduate application. This job role excites me as it will give me enough practical exposure for working in the FMCG industry. It will give me insight into the FMCG industry’s working style, where I will get the opportunity to communicate with distributors and wholesalers.
I have chosen the FMCG industry as it is one of the largest manufacturing sectors in the United Kingdom, and the sector contributes 14% towards the manufacturing industry (Sitanggang et al. 2019). After graduation, this job role will help me acclaim other skills such as analytical skills. The job role of sales person will help me deal with the B2C segment with more proficiency. Here the organization Reckitt Benckiser is promoting such job roles for the applicants who have just completed their graduation. This will help to me to get practical learning opportunities.
The sales person job will help me upgrade my selling skills, and I can apply them to cross-sell and upsell strategies. Practical bookish knowledge will get practical exposure, which is why I liked the job role.
In the current situation of Covid-19, the FMCG industry has got the highest growth due to the applicability of its product categories. The chosen organization, Reckitt Benckiser, is a highly reputed brand in the FMCG sector all over the globe. This job role of sales person has the future emergence and being a graduate, this job role will add additional value to the resume and will get better opportunities in the future. As the reputed company like Reckitt Benckiser is promoting such job scheme for the graduate candidates, it will help me to learn practical approaches of the company’s working process.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be stated in the conclusion that the assignement work has been done based on secondary research work. The secondary research has briefly identified the required skills and knowledge about the industry and the general trends in the sector from technological and globalization perception. A particular job designation of sales person has been identified from the job advertisement of Reckitt Benckiser group. However, this assignment has fulfilled all the requirements by analyzing the particular industry trends.
References
Beg, K., 2018. Impact of Accounting Information system on the financial performance of Selected FMCG companies. Asian Journal of Applied Science and Technology, 2(3), pp.8-17.
Daulay, R. and Saputra, R., 2019. Analysis Of Customer Relationship Management And Marketing Strategies Against Competitive Advantage On The Company’s Distributor In Medan City.
Gong, Y., Putnam, E., You, W. and Zhao, C., 2020. Investigation into circular economy of plastics: The case of the UK fast moving consumer goods industry. Journal of Cleaner Production, 244, p.118941.
Koljonen, H., 2021. Developing Customer Insight Process for Multi-business, Multimarket Company.
Kon?ar, J., Grubor, A., Mari?, R., Vu?enovi?, S. and Vukmirovi?, G., 2020. Setbacks to IoT implementation in the function of FMCG supply chain sustainability during COVID-19 pandemic. Sustainability, 12(18), p.7391.
Kuptsova, E.V., Maslennikov, V.V. and Kalinina, I.A., 2021. Improving the Level of Digital Maturity of the Company (Based on Example of Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC). In Socio-economic Systems: Paradigms for the Future (pp. 309-321). Springer, Cham.
MEIYANI, E. and Putra, A.H.P.K., 2019. The relationship between islamic leadership on employee engagement distribution in FMCG industry: Anthropology business review. Journal of Distribution Science, 17(5), pp.19-28.
Menon, P., Mirpuri, K., Mehrotra, K., Gupta, K. and Karki, K., 2019. Best Visual Merchandising Strategies-An Indian FMCG perspective.
Moosa, S.M. and Jagadeesan, P., 2020. Influence of Social Media on Purchase Behavior of Consumers towards Fast Moving Consumer Goods. Source: https://sersc. org/journals/index. php/IJAST/article/view/16937.
Odwa?ny, F., Szyma?ska, O. and Cyplik, P., 2018. Smart Factory: The requirements for implementation of the Industry 4.0 solutions in FMCG environment-case study. LogForum, 14(2).
Siagian, H., Jade, K. and Tarigan, Z., 2020. The role of affective leadership in improving firm performance through the integrated internal system and external integration FMCG Industry. International Journal of Data and Network Science, 4(4), pp.365-372.
Singh, G., 2020. Net Positive Environmental Impact in the Digital period with Special focus to FMCG companies. International Journal of Modern Agriculture, 9(4), pp.1535-1545.
Sitanggang, R.P., Karbhari, Y., Matemilola, B.T. and Ariff, M., 2019. Audit quality and real earnings management: evidence from the UK manufacturing sector. International Journal of Managerial Finance.
Zaki, M., Theodoulidis, B., Shapira, P., Neely, A. and Tepel, M.F., 2019. Redistributed manufacturing and the impact of big data: a consumer goods perspective. Production planning & control, 30(7), pp.568-581.
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