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and carrots too, says Time magazine in its December 1 edition, arguing that shoppers should forget what the foodies tell them. "Some of the tastiest and healthiest food around is also the lease expensive and most ordinary,"it says. Written by Mehmet Oz, professor of surgery at Columbia University, the article argues that frozen spinach is nutritionally similar to a fresh organic leaf spinach. The rise of foodie culture has venerated all things small batch, local farm and organic. "The fact is a lot of the stuff we ate in childhood can be good for you and good to eat if you know how to shop," he says. Knowing how to shop means the ability to read the label, which will tell you how frozen or canned food was prepared. Dr Oz is a big fan of the tuna salad sandwich and of ice cream! The problem with the latter is the amount consumed. And peanut butter - what you are often seeing is "a source of quality nutrition disguised at indulgent junk". Peanut butt...

Eric Anderson and Duncan Simester published a paper* on pricing in 2003 that showed that $9 price endings increased demand in three experimental settings. The benefit was greatest when the products were new and not previously sold. They were less effective on sale items. And they should not be used on every item. This obviously predates the prevalence of round pound and price-marked packs in the UK convenience channel. I think the point to note is that you need to mix it up. Earlier this year I suggested to one retailer that he did not have any promotions in his shop. He said it was because it was so hard to change prices on his IT system. My reply was to just keep the prices the same but to promote one SKU harder where his shoppers would expect to see a promotion. I have not yet been back to see what he did. This has no scientific evidence to support it. But I have appended it to a report about a scientific study so perhaps you will be persuaded to act on it like you were ...

David Hockney tells a story about a great European portrait that was presented to the Empress of China. In Europe, artists like Caravaggio painted shadows. In China, Japan, Pakistan and India, the artists did not. Looking at the picture, the empress said: "I can assure you, my face is the same colour on both sides." While David Hockney uses this story to promote his idea that cameras were used as technical tools to support great art by the old masters, it is useful to consider what it tells you about gifts and how you receive them. Hard pressed local retailers considering the gift of strategic insight from suppliers often don't get it. The suppliers leave frustrated at the "independence" of the retailer. The retailer perhaps scratches his or her head. Booker this year handed out an excellent guide called "5 Steps to great retailing". I have been meaning to blog about it for a long time. (It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has used ...

A third generation family business, TJ Morris, the company behind Home Bargains is both a success story and an enigma. Well on its way to £1 billion of sales in the UK, it is highly profitable. In 2009 operations director Joe Morris spoke to the FT about its reasons for success: 1. Word of mouth 2. Good products 3. Low prices 4. Honesty 5. Transparency. Its strategy for good products and low prices: 1. Only sell brand names 2. Only sell products it can make a profit on. No loss leaders. 3. Don't confuse shoppers with offers that are here today and gone tomorrow [opposite of Zara!]. 4. Stock changes depending on what can be bought cheaply [manufacturers who overproduce are use TJMorris to get rid of volume.] Run by four brothers. The driver is Tom, who is renowned as a great buyer. "If you buy right you can make money even if the stores are not perfect," says Joe. The shop experience: 1. Is about browsing: let's see what is in there motivation for shopp...

Two pieces of analysis in the Financial Times this week offer food for thought for local retailers in follow up to Tesco boss Philip Clarke's claim that shoppers would order ahead while driving to the store. His vision of drive-thru Tesco stores, captured by Chris Gamm in Retail Newsagent last week, includes the following: "As consumers become increasingly connected to the internet we will probably know your lounge light bulb blew this morning, so we will have already added a new one to your order as well." The first analysis by Jonathan Guthrie concerns the plight of Ocado, the delivery only service that purveys "chard and kumquats to yummy mummies". Its problem is that its supermarket competitors "appear happy to subsidise their own lossmaking online operations indefinitely." There is a persistent question mark over the business model of online grocery sales, which is that the cost of delivery is greater than the margin, which means the bricks ...

We had some great news at work last week when our assessor told us that we had successfully retained our Investor in People status for another three years. Julia, the same assessor we had three years ago, thanked all the people who took part (a third of our 27 strong team) for being consistently positive, open and honest and keen to make suggestions. Our culture, she said, had improved. “You have some quite amazing people in place,” she said. Signing up for Investor In People status was one of the steps on our way to become a great company. Another key factor was agreeing our mission to energise independent retailers. Everyone who works at Newtrade knows that the objective of our work is to help local shopkeepers grow their sales and profits. Having a worthwhile purpose in common drives our team work. Serendipitously I have just read Superteams , a book from team building expert Khoi Tu, that promotes seven rules for getting great performance. He has chosen seven...

When you see the stock market valuations of Internet and social media companies that price audiences at billions of dollars even if there are no profits you may scratch your head in confusion. Future Perfect by Steven Johnson is a book that captures the optimism behind those stock prices and despite its US focus provides some good pointers for small businesses everywhere. At the heart of his argument to be optimistic is his belief that LeGrand stars will be replaced by Baran webs. No, I didn't know what he was on about either. But it is compelling to read on. LeGrand stars are systems like big corporations and big government, named after the Frenchman who built France's railway network centred on Paris. It's super-efficient until the centre breaks down. Paul Baran was an engineer who worked in the US defence industry and developed a communications web that the Soviets could not disable by knocking out the centre. It became the internet. In his book. Johnson gives...