Understanding and responding to customer needs is the key to unlocking retail growth, but it’s not always easy to do. This report describes how a cross section of convenience retailers are using the shopper research methods called out in the last NACS / Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council study; i.e. The Playbook for Success, to strengthen their offer to customers as the path to growing sales.
Since 2008, it’s been harder to generate increases in same store sales and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get easier any time soon. This is one of the reasons why the NACS / Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council began to look at ideas from convenience retail shoppers on what can be done to better meet their needs and, in the process, encourage them to visit and spend more in convenience retail stores.
Convenience store are well positioned to serve the traditional convenience customer, but the rapidly changing marketplace is creating some significant challenges as virtually every retailer looks for ways to build their business by providing solutions for time-starved shoppers. Shoppers have many more choices now that drug and dollar stores, supermarkets and big-box retailers are also trying to win their convenience business.
NACS Council, 2010: The Big Picture: The NACS/Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council previously identified a hierarchy of five shopper needs in the convenience channel.
The Big Picture: The NACS/Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council previously identified a hierarchy of five shopper needs in the convenience channel.
NACS Council, 2009: This report constructs a practical roadmap for growing store business based on research introduced in Fast Forward: Emerging Opportunities in Convenience Retail. Both are published by the NACS/Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council, and based on a study conducted by The Integer Group.
NACS Council, 2005: When the NACS/Coca-Cola Leadership Council (NCCLC) considered research topics for this study, findings of an overall decline in visits to convenience stores had been published in a number of places/ Effective ways to address the decline was on the minds of many in the industry.
NACS Council, 2000: At no time in recent history has there been a greater opportunity for the convenience store industry.
Employee turnover costs companies bottom-line profits. A recent study conducted in the supermarket industry estimated the cost to turnover a single hourly supermarket employee at $3,752. The cost would be similar for the c-store industry.