Jamie Tenser
James Tenser
B2B Expert Storyteller Jamie Tenser has spent a lifetime explaining how consumer goods are made, marketed, moved and merchandised. Part business journalist, part media ecologist, he has relentless fascination with the world’s most pervasive industry. As publisher of VStoreNews, he unpacked innovations that defined food, drug, mass, specialty and e-commerce. He was named a Top Retail Expert by RETHINK Retail in 2023-25. In his consulting practice, VSN Strategies, and as a long-standing member of the RetailWire BrainTrust, he continues to his uniquely informed perspective on all things retail.
Unified Shopper Engagement is Coming. Are Brands Ready?
CALL IT UNIFIED SHOPPER ENGAGEMENT. Once-sharp dividing lines that have separated trade marketing from personalized offers from retail media are blurring, as trading partners...
Tariffs and the Rising Cost of ‘Fresh’: Tactics for the Tomato Wars
THE HUMBLE TOMATO has become a high-profile emblem of the tariffs controversy, and grocers are faced with delivering dual bad news to shoppers: Prices are...
Is Category Management Ready for AI?
WITH THE ADVENT of Artificial Intelligence, Category Management is poised to get faster, more frequent, more connected and more accurate. At least those are the...
As Retail Media Evolves, Brands Face Tough Challenges
AMONG THE MANY CHALLENGES facing CPGs in their efforts to make sense of retail media networks has been a pervasive storytelling bias. On daily basis,...
Shopper Media Reality: Why It’s Time to Rethink In-Store Networks
THE RETAIL MEDIA NETWORK frenzy may be approaching the end of the beginning, as Shopper Media bring more In-store retail media options to CPG...
Retail Media Scale: CPG Brands’ Conundrum
HOW DO BRANDS UNDERSTAND retail media scale as they plan spending? In previous articles in this series, we addressed the challenges CPG brands face in...
What’s ‘Fair and Proportional’ for a Retail Media Network?
HOW ARE BRANDS MANAGING their retail media network spending? Part one of this analysis addressed the conundrum CPG brands face in dealing with retail media networks....
Retail Media and CPGs: How do Brands Optimize Investments?
Amid the hype and hyperbole around Retail Media Networks, some fundamental issues about CPG marketing spending have barely been addressed. Brand marketers have an...
Retail Tech Innovation or Consumer Change: Which Came First?
The post Retail Tech Innovation or Consumer Change: Which Came First? appeared first on Tenser'sTirades.
Millennials: The Next ‘Pig in the Python’
FOR GRAYING BABY BOOMERS like me, the awesome power of demographics has in many ways defined our lives. There are a lot of us....
Flying or Dying: Whose View of Stores Rings True for The Future?
FOR THE 3,100 retail, tech and finance movers and shakers who gathered here in Las Vegas at the inaugural Shoptalk conference this week, an...
Rise of the Retail Robots
FRUSTRATED WITH STORE EMPLOYEES? Maybe a mechanical clerk is the answer. The retail industry today is making some fascinating, promising, and perhaps troubling moves toward...
A Little Problem With Big Data
A STIMULATING DISCUSSION in RetailWire.com this morning led me to once again think deeply about how retailers are confronting so-called Big Data and applying...
The Store is Dead! Long Live the Store!
THE DISTINCTION between online and off-line retail sales grows blurrier by the minute, as shoppers meld their consideration and purchasing behaviors into an “all-line”...
A Framework for “Best Practice”
NOT LONG AGO I WAS ASKED to prepare a “Best Practices” document for a retail solutions company. The task stimulated a round of research,...
Contactless Payments — What’s Taking So Long?
IT’S BEEN A HALF-DECADE since I first got religion about the potential for “contactless payments” using NFC-enabled wallets in mobile phones. A very bright...
Where’s the ROI for Social Media?
AN INSTANT POLL that recently appeared on the home page of CPGmatters.com sheds some light on an important part of social media evaluation; namely,...
Invoking Relevance
BEST PRACTICE IN MOBILE ADVERTISING remains an oxymoron, as marketers grapple with the natural tension between intrusiveness and usefulness. There is a strong drive...
NRF Bulletin: Personalization Done Right
I'VE BEEN ON RECORD many times as a hater of shopper loyalty, but an advocate of intelligent personalization. I admit my position can be construed...
Do CPG Companies Get Online’s Potential?
CONSUMER SURVEYS FROM Deloitte and others consistently report strong intentions by households to purchase more of their grocery and packaged goods online. This has...