People jump to conclusions often with little
evidence to back up their decisions, Daniel Kahneman observes in his book
Thinking Fast and Slow.
“For some of our most important beliefs we have
no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs,”
he writes.
Independent retailers must bear this in mind as
they read national newspapers. Expect to see all sorts of self-interested
story-telling dressed up as truth. Some of this will damage your business.
For example, discount retailers are now in
fashion. “The more consumers are led to focus on price, the more we benefit,”
Roman Heini, joint managing director of Aldi UK told the FT this week. Is it
true? I don’t know. You have to make your mind up.
Worse. Greens newsagents in the heart of Mayfair
has shut its doors. After nearly 20 years of buying his newspapers and
magazines there, Tyler Brûlé, the FT’s Fast Lane columnist was forced to shop
elsewhere.
“This small drama on Marylebone High Street
represents just one example of a huge trend – what we might call ‘the other
face’ of the UK high street crisis,” writes Brûlé. “The issue of
essential independent stores being lost from many gentrifying neighbourhoods.
Typically they are replaced with upscale outlets [that] offer little in the way
of creating any sense of community.”
Newsagents are important, says Brûlé,
who is also the publisher of Monocle, because they tend to offer shelf space to
new publishing ventures that chains often avoid. While you may like his
argument and call to landlords to be nice to independent retailers instead of
seeking to increase the value of their buildings through deals with famous
national chains, you will be better off getting your business model right.
Finally, the Guardian challenged shopper Juliet
Stott to ditch Ocado and try out three alternatives: Lidl, Tesco and “local
stores”. Lidl cost £137 for 126 items. Tesco £136 for 127 items. In each shop
she opted for own label or Everyday Value items.
“Swapping to unknown brands and changing our
buying habits saved us as much as 58% off our weekly shop, which was much more
than I expected,” she says.
The deals to be had by shopping around mean I
will become a much more selective shopper, she says. The savings are
attractive.
But what about in week three? “Shopping in my
local market town just north of York was just as I had expected. It was
expensive and time consuming. There were fewer own-brand products, which meant
I had to pay more for the leading brands or for the privilege of shopping
locally,” she said.
How much did she spend? £74.05. Why so low?
Stott “purposefully restricted what I bought to keep the cost down”.
It is the worst experiment that you could ever
see.
“The greengrocer-cum-deli was a gorgeous place
but some items were almost double the price of supermarkets,” writes Stott. “A
small brown loaf was £1.15. It may have been freshly baked and much better
quality but it was half the size…” I think I can see the bias in this
comparison.
Comments
Post a Comment