November 22nd, 2022, Lesley Simeon
Former Burlington Stores CMO, Bart Sichel will make his way to take up the chief marketing and customer officer role at Bed Bath & Beyond, the home goods retailer has announced. The development comes a few weeks after Sue Gove’s interim CEO role was made permanent in October 2022. Gove had taken up the interim CEO role at Bed Bath & Beyond in June 2022, following Mark Tritton’s exit from the post.
The appointment, however, is part of a string of efforts that the company has implemented in the recent past.
For instance, Sichel’s appointment follows the appointment of a new chief merchandising officer and Gove’s reassembling of the retailer’s C-suite – positions of chief merchandising, operating and stores officers have all been refreshed in recent months. In September 2022, the chief financial officer position was filled in by a new person, following the tragic death of the former CFO, Gustavo Arnal.
In August 2022, Bed Bath & Beyond had announced several cost-cutting measures which included plans to shut down close to 150 of its stores by the end of this year – 56 of which have been identified. The company also made known plans to lay off nearly 20% of its employees.
According to YouGov BrandIndex - which tracks consumer sentiment towards thousands of brands daily – Bed Bath & Beyond’s brand health hasn’t been encouraging in recent months. While it did recover marginally post Tritton’s exit, the brand’s Index metric - which is an overall measure of brand health, made up of General Impression, Customer Satisfaction, Quality, Value, Corporate Reputation and Recommendation – dipped from a net score of 29.2 (around Tritton’s exit), made some recovery between July and August 2022, before dipping further and finally resting at 24.5 on 20 November 2022.
Similarly, the brand’s Value metric – which measures whether the brand represents poor or good value for customers’ money – was at 24.6 days before former CEO Tritton left the company, and has dropped to a 19.4 net score on 20 November. Bed Bath and Beyond’s Current Customer metric has not been impressive either.
Needless to say, Sichel has his task cut out. Together with CEO Gove, Sichel will have to work towards improving Bed Bath & Beyond’s Value perception among target audiences, bring in more customers, recapture market share and in the process, boost brand health.
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Bed Bath & Beyond’s Index metric is an overall measure of brand health, made up of General Impression, Customer Satisfaction, Quality, Value, Corporate Reputation and Recommendation and delivered as a net score between -100 and +100. The Value metric is based on the question: Which of the following brands/stores do you think represents good value for money? Now which of the following brands/stores do you think represents poor value for money? and delivered as a net score between -100 and +100. The Current Customer metrics is based on the question: Have you purchase products such as furnishing and home goods from any of the following brands/stores in the past 3 months? and delivered as a percentage. Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 1738 US adults between 1 May 2022 and 20 November 2022. Figures are based on a four-week-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.