Efficient Consumer Response Hong Kong (ECR HK)

Background & Objective

ECR Hong Kong is a member of ECR Asia set up by GS1 Hong Kong in 1996. It is a joint industry forum comprising members from local retailers, distributors, traders, manufacturers and supporting organisations aimed at facilitating the development and adoption of global ECR concepts in Hong Kong.

Efficient Consumer Response (ECR), a supply chain management (SCM) movement in Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry, was first introduced to Hong Kong by GS1 Hong Kong in 1995. The initiative was started with a series of pilot schemes among a few local leading industry players with the support of government funding. In 1997, a permanent board named Supply Chain Management Advisory Board was set up to provide a direction to local industry players who wish to embrace ECR concept and technologies in their supply chain operations. With the increasing influence of ECR in Asia-Pacific region, more Asian countries are setting up similar boards and the Hong Kong board was later renamed ECR Hong Kong in 2002.

Board Structure & Members

The Board, comprising of over 20 members from different business perspectives from the Retail & CPG Industry, holds meetings regularly to share views and latest development in ECR. Under the auspices of the board, standing committees and task forces may be set up to carry out related activities for on-going matters or project basis as necessary.

Chairman

Name	Company
Ms Connie Yeung	Swire Coca-Cola HK Ltd.

Members

Name	Company
Ms Christina Wong	Accenture Company Ltd.
Mr Johnny Wong	Bausch & Lomb (HK) Ltd.
Mr Wallace Lam	Circle K Convenience Stores (HK) Ltd.
Ms Mona Liu	City Super Ltd.
Mr Billy Yeung	DKSH Hong Kong Ltd.
Mr Philip Ho	Getz Bros. & Co. (Hong Kong) Ltd.
Ms Joe Ho	GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (HK) Ltd.
Ms Betty Leung	Golden Resources Development Ltd.
Ms Cherry Chen	L'ORÉAL Hong Kong Ltd.
Mr Louis Poon	Loscam (HK) Ltd.
Mr Sun Yeung	Nestlé Hong Kong Ltd.
Mr Stephen Chan	Power Hub Ltd.
Mr Tom Lin	Procter & Gamble Hong Kong Ltd.
Mr Alan Chau	Swire Coca-Cola HK Ltd.
Ms Traci Chow	Wyeth Nutrition Hong Kong

Major Achievements

Since establishment, the ECR Hong Kong has been striving to assist the FMCG sector to enhance its competitiveness by removing extraneous cost from the supply chain and increasing responsiveness to fluctuations in consumer demand through ECR techniques. ECR Hong Kong also offers advice to the local business community on efficient trading practices, which are critical for the development of an intra-industry trade infrastructure. In addition, it undertakes concerted efforts at promoting the adoption of supply-chain management (SCM) best practices and technologies and helping enterprises to establish closer connections with SCM and ECR bodies regionally and internationally.

The board of ECR Hong Kong proposed the 4 ‘E’ Strategies – including Efficient Replenishment (ensuring on-shelf availability), Efficient Promotion (engaging digital marketing trends), Efficient Product Introduction (ensuring effective data communications) and Efficient Product Assortment (ensuring category management). A series of initiatives focusing on various areas have been launched, with a joint view to enabling the retail sector gain greater customer satisfaction through close cooperation among retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers.

Initiative	Objective & Achievement
2010 Sharing of Sales and Inventory Data Workgroup	Enhanced visibility over sales and inventory data in order to better plan and react to customers’ expectations. The initiative enabled industry to align on the level of sharing and the contents of sharing.
2011 On-shelf Availability (OSA) (Part 1)	Improved OSA to prevent lost sales and react to customers’ expectations. The initiative enabled industry to align on the OSA definitions and derive a root cause categorization.
2012 New Product Introduction	A new product introduction process to speed up OSA. Industry conducted pilot schemes to identify best practices on new product introduction with the support of a product registry provided by GS1 Hong Kong.
2013 Category Management	New applications on category management. The initiative enabled industry to exchange industry references and delivered a Category Management best practices guidebook.
2014 On-shelf Availability (Part 2)	New ways to further enhance OSA. Industry conducted pilots to explore news to prevent lost sales with the support of Synchronized Supply Chain Replenishment method introduced by GS1 Hong Kong
2015 Supply Chain Processes Optimization	Addresses and streamlines existing goods receiving processes in order to enhance operational efficiency. The initiative enables industry to align on goods receiving processes and delivers the goods receiving processes reference guide.
2016 Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)	The two regional organisations (ECR Europe and ECR Asia Pacific) were officially integrated into the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF)
2017 Publications with GS1 HK’s involvement in e-commerce	Two publications with GS1 HK’s involvement in e-commerce, including the Best Practice of e-Commerce and Outlook for e-commerce Hong Kong have been shared
2018 Digital Transformation Workgroup	Initiated the Digital Transformation Workgroup to identify the insights of new technologies and innovations for retail & FMCG industry, so as to fulfill consumers’ responses more effectively