Sales are the number one priority for retailers. They have to keep people shopping in their stores or the economics just don’t work. Sales need to be a top priority in your business as well. We will focus on driving sales and how this can become integral in the culture of your business in our next series of issues. This month we will start with opportunities to interrupt the shop and get your products into the shopping cart.

Consumers are bombarded in the store

We all know consumers are bombarded with thousands of messages every time they visit a store. If the products could talk it would be like a shouting match down every aisle. You need to think about where your products would be in this unruly mess.

A second challenge you face is that consumers are creatures of habit. Perhaps they don’t want to acknowledge the shouting or perhaps they just like the items they are comfortable with. Catalina Marketing experts from Florida work in the food industry where they implement programs connected to the cash registers in grocery stores. They also analyze a lot of grocery store transactions. In 2014 they released a study where they analyzed the transactions from 32 million consumers across 9,968 U.S. grocery stores. Their findings reveal that the average consumer only purchases .7% of items in the store during the entire year. Consumer baskets are all unique and they only buy a fraction of the SKUs available.    

With the huge amount of messages and the entrenched buying habits you really do need to interrupt the shop to get your items in the shopping cart.

Deliver a message

Consumers today are in a hurry but they are also interested in where their food comes from. It is also true people are attracted to stories. What is your product story and are you telling it? You need to get them engaged and then tell your story.

Here are two examples of this. The first photo is from a store in Seoul, Korea. They were very proud of a new program implemented from farm to store to improve the handling and quality of bananas. Consumers had told them they needed to improve so they did and they used the TV to tell the story. It was interesting to see people stand to watch the brief video, then buy the bananas.

An off-shelf display is an effective (and expensive) way to tell your story. This photo shows a salad dressing produced by youth from Halifax’s inner city. They grow the herbs for the dressings and the proceeds go to scholarship funds for young gardeners and entrepreneurs. Tough to buy national brands when you could support this initiative!

Speak to the consumer

Are you sharing your products’ attributes with the consumer? It is tough to get the message out but if it resonates with your target market you have a much better chance.

In today’s world where consumers are very interested in where their food comes from I found this milk from B.C. very innovative. They tell you right in the name that it is traceable to the farm where it was produced. If you are concerned about where your food comes from this gets your attention.

Don’t always assume consumers understand your item. You do but they probably don’t. It was interesting to see the message on this mango label. It says never stringy. For consumers who might have had an experience where the mango wasn’t to their liking this one might get in their shopping cart.

Complementary items have a better chance to get in the cart

There are some items that naturally go together but grocery stores do not merchandise them together. They put nacho chips in the chip aisle and salsa in the Mexican food section. Consumers are busy and they don’t always remember. Hostess has this figured out with small racks in front of the nacho chips. I have to believe they sell more salsa here than they do in the Mexican section.

If you plan to implement a complementary item program, remember a few things. You have to make it easy for the store to merchandise it together. If they are in different categories they are probably set up in the warehouse to ship to different aisles. How can you overcome this so that it gets executed? You also have to make sure the item gets priced properly. If it has no price it will not sell!

Off shelf that gets my attention

Off-shelf displays work but they are expensive. If you are making the investment, make it worthwhile! You really need to make the consumer stop their shopping and take notice.  Here are a few examples of displays that have caught my attention. It can be the look for the display, humour or just the item itself but something has to force them to stop.

Remember the staff that has to execute it. Make it easy and fool proof.

The floral display is a bucket of water with flowers that ships in the box. They take the lid off, punch out the hole for the bucket and they have an instant floor display.

Tie into current events

Consumers’ minds are cluttered but if you have something on your package or product that is on their mind they will stop. Here are two examples where Kraft and Coca Cola were using the Olympics to do this.           

I appreciate the Olympics are out of reach for most but within reach are local events. There is a lot of talk about consumers being interested in local food so why not tie in local events? This is something smaller regional producers can do that the big national brands can’t. Take advantage of a local event on your packaging.

Go to the store and really challenge yourself to see if your items interrupt the shop.  When they do you will have a much better chance to get into the shopping cart.  If you have had success with interrupting the shop or if you have any questions please give me a call at (902) 489-2900 or send me an email at pchapman@gpsbusiness.ca.

The other side of the desk

Visit a store before meetings

Your time with a category manager is very valuable. You should always know what is happening in their stores before you meet with them. I find it a great habit to get into one or two stores before visiting a retailer’s office. You never know when you might see something new or an example of good execution.

You can mention this during the meeting. Retailers should find it encouraging that you are in the stores.

What’s in store?

How valuable is your time?

I noticed this package of cut vegetables in a Sobeys store recently.  Many people consider time a valuable commodity and Sobeys is doing a good job of explaining how this product will save you time. No doubt a premium but for some they are willing to pay to save the 8-12 minutes.