Confectioner’s Retail Channel Handbook
I hope you found our first Retail Channel Handbook a useful and interesting read. I’d appreciate your comments and thoughts as we do plan to offer these channel insights in 2007 and would like to do an even better job to meet your needs and interests.
Editor Mary Ellen already has some great ideas to
build on our first version of this Handbook and I look forward to
responding to some of your thoughts and suggestions too.
It is interesting how those of us involved in some
aspect of the retail industry divide up our retail shopping channels quite
definitively. The ‘regular’ consumer clearly does not —
particularly those under 25! That became clear when young adults were asked
about their ‘convenience’ shopping habits and product
preferences at the recent NACS (Convenience) Show.
Clearly for this age group ‘convenience’
has nothing to do with the type of store but rather with the type of
shopping experience. They all quickly took supermarkets out of the equation
of ‘convenience’ — because it’s a hassle to park
and you have to walk a long way to get to the store — but drug stores
were very high on their list as a stop for a drink or snack.
Of course the locations of many of the chain drug
stores are in highly-populated areas and it’s easy to find one in
your neighborhood. Drug stores have also done a great job in meeting the
needs of the convenience customer with product selection and the placement
within the store of the types of products often sought on a quick trip.
Traditional convenience stores were of course still
very much on their radar but rather than think of them as a type of store
the brand was mentioned and that counted as a ‘type’ of store.
The frequency of their shopping was also a real
eye-opener. Some ‘convenience shopped’ as often as two or three
times a day — treating the store like their refrigerator or kitchen
it seemed — and three or four times a week was normal.
Here’s Hoping it was a Great Halloween!
Sales were looking good in many of the stores I
visited and yet in other areas there were definitely products destined for
markdowns.
It certainly is important to know the demographics of
your customer and hopefully be able to gauge their buying intent during the
candy holidays. No easy task.
Football is all about the quarterback and success in
the candy category is all about retail. The quickest way to sell more candy
is to get more retail locations and more locations within the store. But
you already knew that. Less focus on the candy aisle and more alternative
primary locations within each outlet is definitely a goal worth aiming for.