Category — Shopper Marketing

Rick Dreiling says the secret of a successful small store is to focus on the items that drive most of the sales at bigger stores, reports Ann Zimmerman in the Wall Street Journal (4/30/12). Rick is chief executive of Dollar General Inc., and that’s his plan as he introduces “fresh food and more refrigerated products” at Dollar General Market stores. The hope is that the grocery items “will drive shoppers to visit more frequently — and increase how much they spend on standard dollar-store fare, from corn chips to clothing.”

The idea is to offer “a place where harried, frugal shoppers can get the most essential things they need at a discount without traipsing through airplane-hangar-sized supercenters, which top 150,000 square feet.” Bucking convention, “the company decided to put frequently purchased items such a bread, milk and juice by the store’s entrance for quick pickup. Most supermarkets stock these items far from the door, forcing customers to walk past an array of tempting merchandise.”

The new format, at 16,000 square feet is “far smaller” than that of supercenters “but still about twice the size of a typical dollar store. Over the next year, Dollar General plans to open about 40 of the Markets, many in ‘food deserts’ — neighborhoods that lack easy access to fresh food.” The Dollar General Market stores are not yet as profitable as the traditional stores, but Rick is optimistic. “They are a good opportunity for growth where they fit,” he says. “But we’re trying to be analytical and thoughtful, eating the elephant one bite at a time instead of swallowing the whole thing.”

Offering advice to nursing moms is enabling a small retailer to compete against Target, Babies R Us and Amazon, reports Nicole LaPorte in the New York Times (4/15/12). The Pump Station and Nurtury, a boutique in Santa Monica, California, began in 1986 as a pump-rental and consulting service for nursing moms. Wendy Haldeman and Corky Harvey initially ran the business out of their homes, but moved to an office after “their husbands became tired of panicked women knocking on their doors at 2 a.m. with nursing questions.” Today, the Pump Station offers a wide array of products for moms, each of which Wendy and Corky have checked out and approved. They also offer classes and private consultations for nursing moms.

The concept is certainly on trend: “According to the most recent information available from the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 75 percent of babies in the United States were nursed at birth in 2008, compared with 70 percent in 2000. Nursing is particularly popular with the Pump Station’s biggest demographic: white, college-educated women over 30.” The baby products market has also grown rapidly over the past decade “into a $9.8 billion” industry, and the “avalanche of baby care products” has left “many parents bewildered.” The confusion is not helped by the internet, which “can be cluttered with conflicting information on sleep training and other baby care methods.”

Nor is it necessarily solved by big, retail chains. “When someone is sitting here going, ‘Oh my God, there are 20,000 bottles out there,’ we can tell them, ‘But this bottle is going to be fabulous and will allow Dad to feed the baby and you to go back to work,” says Pump Station chief operating officer Cheryl Petran, a former buyer for Target. Cheryl says that “hundreds of years ago” women discussed nursing “by the campfire,” but that’s no longer an option. “So moms come here,” she says, “and it is the proverbial campfire, where you can talk and share … That’s a part you’re not going to get sitting in an aisle at Target.”

Because shoppers are averse to paying a “green premium,” marketers are re-framing energy efficiency as cool technology, reports Bryn Nelson in the New York Times (4/11/12). In other words, in addition to buying “a 60-inch television boasting killer picture quality, you may get extra satisfaction knowing that your engineering marvel consumes only as much energy as a 75-watt lightbulb … Newly honed pitches steeped in consumer psychology are linking up the traits people crave — cutting-edge quality, say, or convenience — with the energy savings and reduced emissions championed by environmentalists.”

Whirlpool learned this lesson the hard way back in 1994 with its Energy Wise refrigerator “which created the impression that buying one entailed a sacrifice.” The brand did better with its “sharply styled and high efficient Duet frontload washer, introduced in 2001, which “allowed a large capacity, washed more thoroughly than a top-loader and was gentler on clothes.” The larger story is how such appliances affect energy consumption in aggregate.” The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, for example, “says that a regionwide shift to high-efficiency televisions could yield enough energy savings to power more than 290,000 homes each year.”

With this in mind, the alliance in 2008 started the Energy Forward initiative, which involved placing special labels on televisions meeting certain energy-efficiency standards and offering “a financial incentive of $5 to $15″ to retailers carrying the sets. The idea is to frame “efficiency” as another feature of a well-engineered television. So far, the initiative has “saved the region enough energy to power more than 10,000 homes for a year,” according to the alliance.” In a separate campaign, the alliance is promoting “ductless home heat pumps that double as air conditioners.” While the pumps save an estimated “25 to 50 percent on heating costs, the primary pitch has been to comfort and convenience.”

Advertising and shopper agencies must learn to play by new rules. By Chris Hoyt. To help provide its readers with direction in 2012 and beyond, The Hub Magazine ran a survey last December to ferret out what product marketers and their agencies think will be the key functions and skill sets that agencies will need to help their clients achieve their objectives over the next five years.

What do current practitioners think the respective roles of these agencies should be in terms of planning, media development and promotion development in a path-to-purchase environment? What obstacles are seen for each type of agency in performing these functions? What are the areas of potential conflict — i.e., in which segment of the path-to-purchase is the battle occurring? How do these practitioners — again, defined as both product marketers and agencies — envision the ideal working relationship? … read >>