Shops, POP and ruin pubs: POPAI executives’ meeting – the Hungarian way

On 4-5 October 2012 Budapest was the meeting place of POPAI’s (Point of Purchase Association International) 16 representatives from 9 European countries, and POPAI North America president Michael Heneghan also raised the prestige of the event with his presence. Participants gathered for a bus tour on Thursday afternoon, with a leaflet in their hands about retail in Hungary, complete with Nielsen data.

The first stop was the TescoExtra on Váci Road, where store manager József Hódi guided the group around the recently refurbished hypermarket. Many of the visitors liked the high level Tesco promoted their private label products but missed the same level of support for branded products. In the Déli ABC store manager Zoltán Széchy welcomed the group and showed how the special-location supermarket adapted to the situation of having to serve a large number of shoppers who are on the go. In the Allée shopping centre Spar communications director István Fehér showed guests around the Interspar store. The visitors were impressed by cross-merchandising ideas and the POP tools used. After visiting the stores POPAI’s representatives went to Zwack’s VIP museum, where Csaba Gulyás gave the group an exclusive insight into how Zwack products are made. The next programme was dinner on the Spoon boat, after which László Benedek, Heineken’s sales director took the POPAI team to the ruin pubs and hip clubs of Budapest. On Friday the programme started with Flyvision Kft., the latest member of POPAI Hungary, introducing their world-patented levitation-technology product presentation device. After lunch ET Research introduced their point-of-sale eye tracking and emotion measuring their technologies. Discussions continued until 18:00 and many POPAI representatives stayed in Budapest for the weekend