A few days before Ringo’s husband visited Japan on a business trip, the southern California blogger, desirous of numerous local items but knowing that her husband would have little free time during his visit, placed an order on Amazon Japan. To save on shipping costs, rather than send the items to his Tokyo hotel, she shipped them to a nearby konbini, or convenience store, which has a delivery arrangement with the online seller. “It was very convenient because he didn’t have to shop around for me during his business trip in Japan,” she wrote on her blog. “He was able to save a lot of time there.”
The arrangement was not unique to that particular convenience store; rather, it is a ubiquitous arrangement—Amazon Japan Convenience Store Pickup—for
…show more content…
Are you adapting your business model to move beyond simply selling merchandise, broadening your offerings to include more holistic notions of convenience? For that, you’ll need to consider an enhanced service-centric model, one that builds on these changing lifestyle dynamics.
Rethinking Convenience
“Forget about what the convenience category used to mean for the past 30 years,” instructs Gunter Pfau, CEO of Stuzo, a provider of personalized and predictive commerce solutions for convenience store and fuel retailers. “Convenience will mean something different in five and certainly 15 years than what it means today.” To succeed, he says, will require “rethinking the category—convenience is what really matters.”
It’s not a one-size-fits-all proposition, either, but reflective of your customer demographic. “Convenience differs by location. It means something different for urban and suburban consumer.
“We’re not taking the constraints of what convenience is; we’re reimagining what it is,” he said. “What we’re saying is to rethink the category: What does convenience mean in the store for a professional living in an urban environment, for
…show more content…
Margins? What margins?
Laugh at your own peril. Within four years, the service had expanded to include more than 70 Philadelphia delivery drivers alone, while expanding to 20 locations, from large urban centers (Chicago, New York) to more remote towns (Madison, Wisconsin). As a result of its popularity, the company has attracted millions of dollars in venture capital, to boot.
Its durability and growth reflect a strict focus on efficiency, as goPuff doesn’t aim to be a hypermarket on wheels. Its premise is straightforward and uncluttered: Deliver snacks and smokes and alcohol and cigarettes — college kids’ essentials—24 hours of day, within 30 minutes of a mobile order. (Does the product assortment sound familiar?)
“[It’s] Wawa on wheels,” proclaimed the Philadelphia Inquirer, describing the goPuff operation as incorporating a centralized warehouse in each college town where the company has a presence (typically in a low, low, low rent district), one that stocks 3,000 of the most popular items. Uncomplicated, yes. It’s powered by a popular smartphone app, which gives consumers easy access to tap-and-go ordering. And the concept is resonating—strongly—among its
Provides a unique atmosphere - Their large open stores, packed with designer brands, gives an elegant feeling, with light colored walls that can’t be found at your local drug store. Also, with a low-pressure sales strategy they provide a very relaxed shopping experience.
..., there were also many aspects that all of these Wal-Mart shoppers shared. Mostly everyone dreaded the loud and obnoxious carts as they were walking into the store. And mostly everyone hated how Wal-Mart only had five of their twenty registers open. This caused the buildup of large lines for which people would wait to buy their items. The people in a hurry did not take this lightly. While the shoppers who weren’t in a hurry took this time to read the magazines and check out the candy options.
The Frito-Lay product distribution location strategy is to sell in grocery stores, convenience stores and gas stations. Frito-Lay’s distribution strategy is from manufacturer to retailer and from retailer to customer, thus the retailers offer the company a location to sell their products and allows for intensive distribution ("P7distributioncasestudy - Fritolay"). Frito-Lay products are sold in the snacks area. Frito-Lay aims local customers in the countries in which they distribute their packed
Customer loyalty is another competitive advantage. Trader Joe’s doesn’t provide membership card to the customer, however customer still would like to choose Trader Joe’s just because of this
Shopping is a function of location product assortment and store image (Bucklin, 1967) which explain quite well why do people shop where the shop. All of those theories seems to complement each other, adding some more complexity to this highly complex
Hoover, Gary et al. “At Nordstrom Stores, Service Comes First – But at a Big
For instance, convenience offerings are low-priced goods that consumers can effortlessly acquire because they are relatively ubiquitous while shopping offering requires the consumers’ effort in comparing and contrasting various brands and retail outlet to find the best product at a good price. Besides, while convenience products are needed on a daily basis, shopping goods may not be required on a daily basis and it has a higher price compared to convenience goods. (Tanner & Raymond, 2010). Furthermore, specialty products are different from convenience and shopping offering because it is more expensive from the previous offerings and it is also not commonly sold in retail outlets. The consumers are few and the products are purchased less frequently, which give it a high margin profit. Finally, unsought offerings are different from all because they could be acquired even when it may be unnecessary at the moment. It is a product of circumstance by any
Americans have been so blind-sided by all the shiny gadgets and the commercialization of “necessities” around them that they have confused the idea of what they want with what they need. This need for perfection is a want—a secret desire in disguise. We trick our minds into thinking we need that $50,000 brand...
Walmart serves about 14 million customers each day. When Sam Walton founded Walmart in 1962 I’m sure he didn’t expect it to become as big of a retail store as it is now. 42 years after being founded, Walmart now has 4,253 stores across the world, and brings in $405 billion dollars a year. This kind of success doesn’t just happen overnight.
“Fast, Friendly, Clean” – This initiative is to help Walmart improve the customer’s in-store experience and also be more efficient in the logistics aspect. Besides that, “Fast, Friendly, Clean” helps Walmart to reduce the
7-Eleven is best described as being a joint ownership. 7-Eleven does exactly what some joint ownerships do where a business creates local business with investors in a foreign market. 7-Eleven put their stores in several countries and has done with many countries dream of doing, and they have entered market in a foreign country and have become so submerged that many people do not even know that they are not an American company.
Thau was inspired by the Bashar Nejdawi, president of Ingram Micro Mobility that is a provider of technology and supply chain services. According to Nejdawi, “In five years, consumer electronics stores as we know them today won’t even exist, and the same rings true for our favorite apparel brands”. He also asserts that three influential factors will change the retail landscape: instant gratification, borrowing and customization. A good example of instant gratification is Uber or Amazon. The Uber customer can see in real time where the Uber car is and when is going to arrive. In the same way the Amazon provide fulfillment program that allow retailers to sell products that are not physically in storage. In this way the retailers do not have to care about inventory and can concentrate on marketing. Secondly, the borrowing culture is going to grow. As an example is Zip Car or Netflix applications. On the Zip Car program someone can borrow a car just for few hours. Likewise, some business offer a mobile device rental program that allow a customer to lease the latest device for a fraction of the cost. Further, the customization program permits customers to choose their preferences before the product is being made. As an example is miAdidas company that gives to the clients the possibility to create
All choices made by Seven-Eleven are structured to lower its transportation and receiving costs. For example, its area-dominance strategy of opening at least 50 to 60 stores in an area helps with marketing but also lowers the cost of replenishment. All manufacturing facilities are centralized to get the maximum benefit of capacity aggregation and also lower the inbound transportation cost from the manufacturer to the distribution center (DC). Seven-Eleven also requires all suppliers to deliver to the DC where products are sorted by temperature. This reduces the outbound transportation cost because of aggregation of deliveries across multiple suppliers. It also lowers the receiving cost. The information infrastructure is set up to allow store managers to place orders based on analysis of consumption data. The information infrastructure also facilitates the sorting of an order at the DC and receiving of the order at the store. The key point to emphasize here is that most decisions by Seven-Eleven are structured to aggregate transportation and receiving to make both cheaper.
The other day I walked into the supermarket to buy a box of Kleenex. I was faced with a variety of colors, textures, box designs, and even the option of aloe. All these features designed for a product to blow my nose into! Selection wasn't limited to the Kleenex section, either…I found abundance in every aisle. We seem to always want more - more choices, more variety, more time. In fact, even the word "supermarket" implies a desire for more than just a simple market.
In order to look out for their customers, Pick n Pay released a customer rewards programme called “Smartshopper”. The programme, launched in March 2011, allows the franchise to get to know and understand each customer better by observing each individual’s shopping habits and references. The company has direct access to many Smartshopper customers via e-mail and/or sms, which allows the business to communicate with their customers in a more engaging manner. Pick n Pay asks for feedback from customers, and sends targeted marketing communications directly to them. All of this is done in an effort to both design and execute marketing campaigns and product ranges which are more relevant to their customers by extracting insights from the customers shopping habits data, as well as to assist the company in growing their sales volumes – which will ultimately lead to an rise in profit (FastMoving, 2012).