Skip to main content

Watching the pennies

Fiona Dawson, president of Mars Chocolate in the UK, says that local shops need to get behind the big brands in their confectionery displays and support countlines as affordable treats. The price of treats cannot go up and up and up, she says.

However, as retailers know, the rise of promotions means that shoppers are flip-flopping from brand to brand in search of the better deal. This poses some big problems for confectionery sales.

So it cannot help when shoppers at Reading station are faced with variable pricing for Snickers bars on platforms 4 and 5. At the shop called WHSmith on platform 4 a Snickers Duo costs £1.05. At the WHSmith on 5, it costs 99p or two for £1.50.

The secret? The WHSmith on platform four is operated by SSP, the Euston based "food travel experts". The one on platform five is operated by WHSmith itself. A problem for the retailer's brand more than for Mars?

However, a real challenge for the countline snack people may be coming from a different direction. At my local Best-One I stood behind two young lads, one of whom was counting out 36 pennies. He was buying a packet of budget biscuits. Once outside the shop he divvied it up with his mate. To them, 18 biscuits at 2p a unit seemed a great deal.

Which flips to the second part of the countline proposition - the quality of the snack on offer. Some shoppers are paying attention. Others do not.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digital disruption in the UK wholesale space

“Twenty years ago I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift,” says Jeff Bezos in his most recent letter to shareholders. A blink later and he points out that the company has grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to 230,000 now. But his ambition is the same. “We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness and risk-acceptance mentality that is normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.” Amazon is great at disruption because of its customers focus and the fact that the internet means it needs none (or very few) people between its warehouses and the shopper. The threat of Prime, its membership service, is the biggest challenge facing the UK retail market and the wholesale market by extension. It is both a direct threat and an indirect threat in that is inspiring countless numbers of othe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Traffic lights: a fuss about nothing

I am sure that FT columnist Michael Skapinker has written about traffic lights food labelling before and his latest article is provocatively called: The food companies that make people fat. He criticises Coca-Cola and Unilever for sticking with guideline daily amounts (GDAs) when traffic lights work much better. Former Walmart Europe public affairs head Bernard Hughes wrote in to support Skapinker. He said: "There isn't ever a perfect information system flowing with beautiful logic. But traffic lights give powerful direction to the busy consumer." But in this age of smart phones surely this debate over the labelling on the packaging is easily overcome. The government can simply issue an app that when held over a bar code provides shoppers with a traffic light system. The supermarkets could do this on their websites. Surely the whole point about the future is that the internet and limitless data storage means that the shopper is being empowered with the informatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sunday trading consultation: fair or fixed? You decide.

My local council, South Oxfordshire, asked me to complete a survey on Sunday trading as a local resident. The deadline is next week. The first question was about the current arrangements and what I thought. There were five options: large shops shouldn’t open six hours is already too long current restrictions are about right large shops should be allowed open for longer no restrictions. My answer was the current restrictions are about right. The next question was about what would happen if the council allowed large stores to open for longer. The menu included 10 options and a space for other. The options were that it would: encourage me to shop more in my local town give me more flexibility impact on my religious or cultural beliefs have a positive impact on my business have a negative impact on my business increase footfall to my business reduce footfall to my business provide more employment opportunities open to me in the local area mean that I need to...
Post a Comment
Read more