I Get Around
As someone who is both a purveyor and student of the craft beer scene, I have long joked that we aficionados of the brewer’s art are a highly disloyal group, to the point of being promiscuous drinkers. Unlike your hard drinking uncle who slams down case after case of Bud, craft beer drinkers like to try as many different beers as they can.
This is actually what prompted the development of the Untappd app in 2010, allowing fans to log all of their beers. The implicit goal is to get as many uniques as possible. Thus, it finds us not only trying a lot of different beers at any given brewery, but also trying as many different breweries as we can. Travel becomes an adventure as we seek out local breweries, and, more times than not, I will start with a flight of four to six brews served in four-ounce glasses. Bam. My Untappd lights up.
If we are loyal to any one thing, it is that we are loyal to the craft, but that’s it. Otherwise, we are drinking around.
It never dawned on me to use the word “promiscuous” in any other consumer context until today, when I stumbled into a news item about promiscuous shoppers, especially in the grocery industry. Silly me. I should have known this. Apparently it is a thing now, a phenomenon that marketers are trying to figure out how to overcome.
My Dad the Accountant was King of promiscuous shoppers back in his day, bouncing from one store to the next, shopping all of the weekly deals. He had done his homework by reading all of the Wednesday adverts in the newspaper, and crafted detailed shopping lists by store. It was all about saving money.
As for me, I have long known there is no single supermarket that has everything I need or want. Some stores have specialty items that only they carry, but nobody else has at all. I thus shop around, explaining why I hit Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods while on travel. Back here in Canyon, I am primarily a Walmart shopper, partially because of prices, but also because Walmart stocks more of what I want. That doesn’t stop me from ever shopping at United, though, whether in Canyon or south Amarillo.
It just depends. Maybe I need something fast, using the Canyon United almost as a convenience store, but at the much larger Marketstreet United on Coulter at Loop 335, I will look for more specialized items, particularly spices and salsas.
As for the general market, only 1% of shoppers are strictly loyal to one store. The typical American shops at two stores per week, for whatever reason. If people treated their marriages like they do their grocery shopping—and how I treat my craft beer preferences—we would have a lot of problems on our hands.
The current shopping around is very different from how supermarkets tried to build loyalty in the past. Not all that many years have passed since I saw chains like United offering kitchen items, such as China and utensils, such that the more you shopped, the more “free” stuff you got. And who among us would want to have an incomplete set of China or utensils? I mean, unless you are a bachelor and none of those things matter to you. Am I right, guys?
With so many plates, bowls, cups, and saucers needed to complete a set, you could lock in a customer for months, maybe even a year.
Before that, trading stamps were a thing, like S&H Green Stamps. Surprisingly, that company is trying to make a comeback, but I have my doubts. Essentially, shoppers received stamps in return for their shopping, based on how much they spent. Back at home, shoppers licked those stamps and put them into special booklets. They could later redeem completed books for merchandise at S&H stores, completely oblivious to the fact that they had been paying higher prices all along to pay for all of that stuff. Neither the supermarket nor S&H were doing this promotion out of the goodness of their hearts, but boy did it engender store loyalty.
So what’s a supermarket to do these days? I am pretty sure that everyone has given up on the idea of shoppers ever being as loyal as they once were. We are deal prone, especially in an era of inflation. We like niche products. And we don’t care about the long-term viability or profitability of the company. It’s all about us now. Monogamy? What dat?
The grim reality is that there is no such thing as the one-stop shop. You can come close, but shoppers know today that there is greener grass—and better prices or selection—on the other side of the fence.
Supermarkets thus need to focus on niches instead of trying to be all things to all people. I am pretty sure that Trader Joe’s is already very much aware of this, especially with only 4000 SKUs. They know that shoppers cannot possibly get everything they want or need (I wish I kept track of how many times they did not have green onions, something I use on a regular basis). Instead, they have built their cult following on their private label products, some of which change with the seasons, while others are evergreen.
This helps explain the huge rush of shoppers in September to grab all of the pumpkin-themed products and other fall items. The same goes for the winter holidays, with lots of spiced foods and beverages. And as you recall, TJ’s is the antithesis of good marketing, because they do very very little.
It is thus up to each supermarket to determine their core competencies, whether it is organics, meats, whatever, remembering they cannot be top dog in everything. And once you build a base of shoppers who come for those specialties, you can always hope they pick up a few more things.
Furthermore, give up on silly promotions, the kind that shoppers once fell for hook, line, and sinker. We are a much savvier lot these days, not to mention skeptical of dubious promotions. We can see right through them, and we know when someone is trying to manipulate us.
But what about digital marketing? And why did it take you more than 1000 words to get to this point, DrG?
I see big opportunity with mobile apps. Make it easier to find items. Offer me deals on selected products. Reward me as if I were your most loyal shopper, even if I am not. Consider me as an audience of one, using geofencing to recognize when I cross the threshold of your store. Greet me. Treat me.
I have yet to see a store do this yet, but I think the time is coming soon. Walmart comes close, because when I need to find where something is, the app automatically knows which of their 4600 stores I am in, and then sends me to A7, which may be A11 in a different store. I haven’t seen any personalization yet, though, even though I always keep their app open. Nothing special for me other than easy search, and then my stored Walmart Pay at the self-check stand.
It is fun to imagine, though, how stores could use digital marketing in light of the fact that we are highly likely to be promiscuous and only there for part of our shopping. I am also pretty sure my Dad would have liked being around for the digital era. It would have made his life a lot easier.
Dr “I Drink—And Shop—Around” Gerlich
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