Pa. Liquor Control Board asks universities for help in redefining its sales model
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A shopper inspects wine offerings from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's self-serve kiosk at a Harrisburg grocery store.
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Soon enough, we may learn whether university statisticians and economics students will earn an A in selling booze.
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is asking the state's universities to provide "statistical analysis and economic research to help redefine the PLCB's current sales model." The board sent out the bid invitations in late June, and proposals are due July 28.
In the past several years, the PLCB has sought sales, marketing and organizational guidance from a variety of contractors and resources -- not unusual for an organization or company the size of the liquor control board, with $1.8 billion in annual sales.
In 2007, it entered a contract with E.&J. Gallo Winery and Future Brands LLC to study consumer preferences. The following year, it launched a campaign to remake the PLCB image with an "enduring, iconic brand identity." San Francisco-based Landor Associates eventually won a $3.7 million contract to run that campaign. Later, the PLCB signed a $174,000 contract with a Pittsburgh company to train employees to better interact with customers.
That brand-end tinkering is separate from the mission of more fully understanding the PLCB's customers and their buying habits. Because it is an enormous wholesaler, distributor and retail operation rolled into one, it has a wealth of robust sales data, the envy of private-sector distributors.
But how best to use it? PLCB board Chairman Patrick J. Stapleton III said the university query is driven by "more of an outreach" to the schools, than by any actual shortcomings in the system's own data analysis.
In the document issued by the liquor control board, the system said it was looking for data-collection advice, development of new sales models and tutorials, information about inter-store sales migration and cannibalization, and sales "relationships, patterns and correlations which may not be readily or intuitively apparent."
On the branding end of things, meanwhile, the tinkering continues. In the next few weeks, the PLCB hopes to find a location where it can open its Pittsburgh "prototype" store, one of several stores-of-the-future opening around the state (the first opens Wednesday in New Hope).
Also, the PLCB recently rolled out a new consumer website. The site, created by Landor and some in-house designers, is finewineandgoodspirits.com. (The old site, pawineandspirits.com, now redirects visitors to the new one.)
"The shelf life of a website is a year or two. That [old] website was five or six years old," Mr. Stapleton said.
First Published July 20, 2010 12:00 am
