Convenient locations, one-stop shopability, and right product variety make up the Convenience pillar. Convenience is the least important factor for explaining short-term market share gains, and retailers in each of the four Covid Momentum Quartiles performed similarly on Convenience.
customers favored Speed during Covid, which correlates negatively with larger format stores where customers can do all their shopping at once. Moreover, evolving commuting behaviors from people working from home and limited mobility due to stay-at-home orders shifted which stores were now considered Convenient. While people were adjusting to new ways of shopping for food, and making trade-offs on Price and product quality and variety, they were being hit with out-of-stocks, which affected their ability to easily buy their typical brands.
Despite stay-at-home orders, changes in commuting behaviors and erratic outof-stocks (or perhaps because of these things), basket sizes were up and visits per customer were down for every retailer we studied. At the time we surveyed, the average basket size was ~30% higher for shoppers in the market. Additionally, the average share of wallet that customers were giving to their current grocery retailer was ~14% higher. Translation: customers consolidated their shopping to fewer stores, giving more money to each store. This occurred even for stores that were competitively less well-positioned for one-stop-shopability heading into Covid. In fact, stores that scored in the lowest quartile on "I can do all my shopping at this one store" had the largest increases in basket size and share of wallet during Covid. In other words, during Covid, shoppers were more forgiving of a retailers' faults in their quest to fulfil their short-term shopping needs and get home quickly and safely.
Convenience and Covid: Voice of the customer
"With work at home - I cannot shop at the grocery stores I usually shop at because they are in the town where I work - 30 minutes away and feel wasteful driving that far just for groceries."
customers' overall price perceptions for each banner drive this pillar. Price has been the dominant driver of long-term preference in the grocery industry. Over the past three years, the importance of Price was marginally declining as the economy strengthened but was still the most important driver in 2019. During 2020, however, Price was less important as consumers looked to get in-and-out as quickly as possible and scrambled to simply find items in-stock.
Price perceptions are also correlated with how far shoppers will travel and how emotionally connected they are to the store. Simply put, shoppers will travel longer distances for better prices and are more likely to be satisfied with retailers with strong price perception. Additionally, Price perception is much more likely to be positively impacted by better base prices than by relevant discounts and promotions.
So, how has Covid changed the competitive dynamic? As mentioned above, the Price is the top driver in explaining long-term performance in previous reports, but for driving short-term financial performance during the Covid Era alone, Price dropped behind Speed, Digital, and Discounts, Rewards & Information. This shift in customer needs aligns nicely with traditional banners, who have historically done well on Speed and Discounts, Rewards & Information, but poorly on Price. This also helps explain why traditional banners like Food Lion, Albertson's and Winn Dixie performed well in 2020, while powerhouse banners like Walmart, Costco and Trader Joe's have stumbled a bit.
Also, in a year of rapidly growing prices and the chaos resulting from the virus, we saw traditional banners improve their Price perception scores more than any other channel. We don't expect that traditional retailers did anything much different, but we hypothesize that their Speed and Safety scores helped to create a Price perception halo and that customers felt EDLP competition had less reliable and consistent pricing than they typically had. More relative value was delivered by traditional banners and that translated in improved Price perception for many shoppers. However, we expect Price perception across banners to return to their pre-Covid levels once the dust settles in the back half of 2021 and 2022. The two tables on the right highlight the gains made by traditional grocers with regards to Price perception. The first table below shows the First Quartile banners for Price. Only four of the fourteen banners are traditional banners, and they include Market Basket, H-E-B, ShopRite and Fareway. The remaining ten banners fall into mass, warehouse, or discount channels which is consistent with the three previous RPI studies. However, when we look at the notable gainers in the second table, all those jumping more than five ranks are traditional banners. Although Price was less important this year, these gains by traditional banners also helps to explain why they did so well in 2020.
We also expect that, long-term in a post-Covid world where supply chains are back to normal and pricing signals are once again clear, Price will be the dominant driver for choosing a preferred retailer. This could also be amplified if the much of the country experiences economic struggles and government stimulus is delayed or non-existent. The structural damage to the economy is still not fully understood and the more damage that occurs during the virus, the longer it will take for the economy to fully bounce back.
Price and Covid: Voice of the customer
"I only buy where I can pick up groceries without leaving my car, but I must purchase minimum $35. If I only need a carton of milk, I just have to wait until I need 5 or 6 cartons, or enough other things to add up. I almost always end up spending too much."
Hence, the context and laboratory for these suggestions is the retail store, where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
1. Who really runs the store?
Walking around a store (or better, walking around several), can give many clues toward understanding a retailer's attitude about its Customers, as well as revealing some of the challenges ahead for installing Customer First. As Customers ourselves, we are qualified to assess an organization's 'readiness' for Customer First, simply starting by walking around.
How a Customer experiences the store shapes their perception of the brand, and there are dozens (even hundreds) of 'moments of truth' for Customers in each shopping trip – opportunities for the retailer to win more loyalty, or indeed to lose it. And it only takes one 'bad' experience to erase all the good.
Leaders can form an opinion about the Customers' true shopping experience by observing 'Who really runs the store?' – a way to put on a Customer lens to assess if the Customer, the retailer, the supplier, or no one is driving shopping experience decisions, like range and presentation. For example:
- Choose three sections across the store (telling categories include yogurt, pasta sauces, milk, and packaged lunch meats). Look to see how the product is organized and presented (remember to try to see through the eyes of a Customer).
- Is the section organized by brand (e.g. all Danone yogurt is merchandised together in a recognizable Danone brand block)?
- By Customer benefit or usage (e.g. all brands of probiotic yogurt are merchandised together, as are all Greek style yogurts, all kid's yogurts, etc)?
- Or, by some hybrid but logical planogram rather random plan, with little recognizable logic at all?
- Would you conclude that the product display / layout logic is influenced more by supply chain, by brands, or by the Customer need states or trip missions?
- How broad is the range (e.g., number of varieties or sizes)? How deep (e.g., number of brands of the same flavor or variety)? Does the breadth and depth feel Customer friendly, or confusing?
Of course, analysing any available loyalty data will later tell us how Customers shop the category and that might well be by brand (or flavour or size, etc., and will certainly vary by section). But this first assessment helps us begin to form our perspective on how tuned-in the business is around its Customers, and about where within the business leaders might need to begin to install insights and the Customer language.
2. What messages are Customers receiving?
Store signage not only delivers a written message, but also a type of 'body language' that Customers tune in to, albeit not always consciously. Look around the store to see both the written and hidden messages, and hear the tone being communicated: ask, do messages speak respectfully to Customers? For example:
- Signage at the entrance rudely telling Customers what the rules are, even though 99.999% of Customers will never even think of shopping without shirts or shoes, or wearing roller blades
- Narrow limits on the quantities of promoted products or services.
- Rules and restrictions, terms and conditions.
- Aggressive security barriers and gates at entrances – although sometimes operationally necessary, these also tell honest Customers that they, the shoppers, are not to be trusted.
- Phony expiration dates for promoted prices – Customers learn that the deal will be repeated soon, if not immediately. Best example is the many carbonated soft drink promotions below shelf price that are repeated frequently, and the innumerable 'roller' prices practiced by many retailers.
- Stupid pricing signs (any stupid sign, really).
3. What messages are Employees receiving?
While walking the store, traveling through stock rooms and the employee break room, note the signage and messaging aimed at staff. What seems to be valued more – numbers or people?
What policies and rules guide employee behaviour?
How are they expected to interact with Customers?
Are the messages respectful of staff? Of Customers?
What do signs say about the culture around Customers?
4. Who has the power to satisfy Customers?
dunnhumby's Loyalty Drivers analysis suggests that Customers exhibit four 'mindsets' in their shopping journey – Discover, Shop, Buy, and Reflect. One element of the 'Reflect' mind-set includes the decision to return, exchange, or to request a refund when the product or service does not quite suit.
On your store walk, observe who has the power to satisfy Customers making a return or wanting a refund: is the front-line employee empowered to satisfy the Customer, or must the Manager be called? Is there one 'service' desk where Customers must queue to get their money back, or can the helpful cashier make it good on the spot?
Examine the return policy to assess its sensibility and ease from a Customer viewpoint. For example, must a Customer act within 7 or 30 days, and is a receipt required and signature under penalty of perjury? Is the taking of an oath necessary, or perhaps a drop of blood? The store's practice says volumes about who deserves trust in the eyes of the business. Requiring levels of approvals and higher management involvement (or some other form of hoop-jumping) is neither trusting of employees nor Customers.
The return / refund policies and practices are strong indicators of a company's readiness for, or progress along the Customer-centric journey. Customer First organizations give front-line employees broader authority to resolve Customer needs, and extend the power to satisfy Customers to most members of staff, in some form. For best practices in this area, please see the policies from Nordstrom in the U.S. and Ritz-Carlton globally.
5. Do the words of your leaders matter?
Senior leaders set the tone for how Customers are regarded and treated in the business both by their words and their actions, of course. And the C.E.O.S – Customers, Employees, Owners, and Suppliers – all take notice. It's widely documented that leaders who walk the walk are more effective than those who only talk the talk.
One simple yet powerful way to assess readiness and progress is seeing how leadership's walk and talk align. A word cloud, like the one illustrated below, makes the point very clear. In this example, recent shareholder statements (same quarter) were compared for two companies on a Customer-centric journey. We can see different progress in a form of 'walking the walk' at Retailer X and Retailer Y. The C.E.O.S are hearing what really matters to the leaders, and are forming the Customer culture accordingly, all the way down to store level.
Implications for retail leaders
The store shapes Customers' perception of the brand; there are hundreds of opportunities for the retailer to win or lose loyalty in each shopping trip. Customers take clues, consciously and unconsciously, throughout their entire shopping experience, and draw conclusions about retailer warmth and attitude toward shoppers. And it only takes one disappointing experience to erase all the good.
Retail leaders must take an objective assessment of the shopping experience using a Customer lens to understand their current state and readiness for customer centricity. Pay close attention to the body language and tone of your policies. Store signage, employee empowerment and communications, and practices around assortment and presentation are clear indicators of the organization's attitude about the Customer.
Who actually runs your store?
This is the first in a series of LinkedIn articles from David Ciancio, advocating the voice of the customer in the highly competitive food-retail industry.
