Retail category management under shelf-space dependent demand: The effectiveness of category captainship

Category captainship is a retail category management practice where the retailer delegates certain category decisions to a vendor, known as the category captain, to leverage the vendor’s market expertise and reduce the retailer’s workload in managing the category. We examine the effectiveness of category captainship compared to traditional retailer category management, focusing on scenarios where shelf space capacity decisions are delegated to the category captain, and demand is dependent on shelf space capacity. Our study considers two competing manufacturers, each selling a substitutable product through a common retailer. We find that when the retailer’s profit-sharing ratio is sufficiently but not excessively high, category captainship can enhance profits for both the retailer and the captain manufacturer. These profit improvements are more pronounced at intermediate values of shelf space elasticity of demand. Although the non-captain manufacturer may suffer from competitive exclusion under certain conditions, “win-win-win” outcomes in profits and sales occur when the products are highly differentiated by price or shelf-space elasticity. The retailer benefits from increasing demand elasticity of shelf space and prefers to designate the manufacturer with the higher elasticity as the category captain. When the profit-sharing ratio is determined through a retailer-led bargaining framework, the retailer benefits most by negotiating sequentially with the manufacturers, inducing the manufacturer with lower bargaining power to take on the category captain role. Our findings provide valuable insights into developing category management strategies under shelf-space elastic demand.