Poorer and less obese: your average shopper?

Writing in the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, recounts how he took part in a television discussion about the links between obesity and poverty, when a fellow panelist said to him: "It's all right for you, shopping at Waitrose".

Mr MacKenzie then defends his choice of supermarket by saying it is the nearest to where he lives and as "any food retailer will tell you - thanks to their extensive research - no customer wants to travel more than one and a quarter miles to shop. It's why supermarkets build more and more stores".

If he is correct, then Waitrose must locate its shops where there are fewer obese people - and as it adds more stores then it will have more "problem" shoppers, where I use the term "problem" loosely.

Research by Kantar Worldpanel shared with me by Ed Garner before Christmas plots the major supermarkets and independent shops on to a graph where the two axis are the percentage of upmarket ABC1 shoppers and the relative number of shoppers with a body mass index of more than 30.

At the top right of the graph sits Waitrose, with around 73 per cent of shoppers being ABC1 and 35 per cent fewer overweight shoppers than the average grocery shop. Tesco is slightly overweight on ABC1s, at 55 per cent and has around 5 per cent more overweight shoppers than the average.

Independent local shops are massively underweight on ABC1s, with around 37 per cent, and have around 6 per cent fewer overweight shoppers than the average.

Which tells us that the average local shop is likely to be trading with fewer upmarket customers than the supermarkets but its shoppers are less likely to be obese. By extension you could say that local shops serve more poor people, but fewer obese people.

If independents, which only have a 2.1 per cent share of the market as calculated by Kantar, were a multiple, its management would be seeking to increase the number of ABC1s they attracted and to attract them with a healthy range.

The competitor they would be benchmarking themselves against would be the Co-op, which has 47 perr cent ABC1 shoppers and 15 per cent fewer overweight shoppers. If you are interested in the Co-op model, it has plenty of new c-stores open around the country - one in every post code.

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...

New look: big copy small?

The owners of B&Q are talking up how they have cut the price of a store refit from £2.5m to £1m by using wood-effect vinyl instead of wood and painted MDF backboards for displays. Managers are learning to live with grey shelving instead of a warmer-looking cream. Shoppers notice the produce, not the fixtures, suggests one executive. Up to a point! Most local retailers will extract the maximum possible life from their fixtures, sometimes taking too long to change equipment that has become tired. As in all business, it is getting the balance right. Shops need to be refreshed and with a purpose.

What do shoppers see

I read a good post (http://www.newsagencyblog.com.au/2009/08/28/what-do-newsagents-charge-for-faxing.html) asking what price local shops charge for providing a fax service. The blogger had attached a photograph of his sign with his prices on it. What struck me was the message on the sign. "You drop, we fax," it said. "Pressed for time, drop your documents with us and we'll do it for you at no extra charge." That is a message that will persuade most shoppers that you want to give them good value, even if they stay to do the copying or faxing themselves.

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