In short: shoppers are facing a minefield, and so are brands. In such a diverse shopping environment, brands are struggling to manage the entire product content lifecycle—from content creation to the distribution of B2B2C product content—across the GDSN and other required channels, resulting in data quality and consistency being compromised.

Brands need to take back control of their product content to overcome this minefield.
A recent NIQ Brandbank survey highlighted just how challenging it is for brands to get their content online. In fact, 50% of respondents state that their main struggle is multichannel distribution, syndicating their product content to retailers, PIMs, GDSN, third parties and more.

Brands need to have the ability to easily integrate and distribute product content to GDSN data pools, and to the largest network of retailers, with the guarantee that the right content is in the right place at the right time.

This seems easy, right? But every retailer has their own specific requirements, so it’s not surprising that 30% of respondents struggle to meet retailer requirements. With every retailer requiring different product information, a particular size for the product image, or a specific shot type of the product, it is no wonder managing and distributing product content to multiple channels is a hurdle for any brand to overcome.

Finally, the remaining 20% of respondents confirmed that they struggle with the increasing number of product attributes available. In 2009, an average of 60 product attributes were used by retailers and suppliers, compared to today, where there are over 400 attributes used, including 100 attributes that are category-specific. This in turn has dramatically increased the complexity of managing product content and has contributed to the missing product information across the multiple distribution channels.