He struck back at the ‘Supermarket Switcheroo’
dbaron | Wikimedia Commons
Your daily Letter to the Columnist — Dec. 6, 2012
Almost exactly a year ago, I went through this problem with my large Kroger store in Daleville. They rearranged probably 2/3 or more of the products in their inner isles. Much smaller rearrangements by this store in the past had made me angry enough, but this called for a response.
A little Google research revealed two things. First, in grocery speak, this activity is called a “reset”, as in “Take the catsup from the condiments area and reset it in the beans area, which is now in the old baking section.” Second, although the store manager might spin some story about improved customer convenience, a reset is, in fact, done almost exclusively to increase store sales volume and profit.
As you point out, a reset results in dazed customers wandering around aimlessly and likely to see and buy products not on their list and often not needed at all.
As a manipulated and decidedly inconvenienced customer, I was, as they say, mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it any more. I decided to leave Kroger and switch to a slightly closer, and far smaller, Food Lion.
Before doing that, I wanted Kroger to know what they were losing and why. I actually went back through my checkbook register for the previous two years and calculated that losing me would cost Kroger about $300 a month (for one adult human and two cats). That’s small potatoes in the big picture, but big enough for a Roanoke regional manager to call when they got my separation e-mail in Cincinnati and apologize for the “timing” of the reset and ask me to reconsider. Apparently not big enough, though, to promise never to reset again.
I could not be happier. The Food Lion is maybe 25% of the size of the Kroger store, and I have had to give up a lot in product variety and size choices. But the store has everything I need along with that old Mick-or-Mack feel. The staff are helpful and seem to remember me. And even if they reset the entire store, it won’t take all that long to relearn it.
Maybe I did not teach Kroger a lesson, but I learned one. You can go home again, back to the days of almost neighborhood grocery stores.
Ted Towles
FINCASTLE
December 6, 2012 - 1:30 PM
Having worked in retail (and my wife too), while I can understand the periodic frustration as a customer of having things moved around…these things are done for a reason. Product lineups change with time, as do offerings, brands, and the availability of products. Combine that with sales numbers on stocked inventory, and stores are constantly working to maximize their sales and minimize shrink.
Shrink is loss…sometimes it comes through theft, but in a grocery store it can also come through products expiring before they are sold. If items are introduced and tally low-turnover sales, they get reduced or eliminated to clear the way for better selling products the store won’t take a loss on. That’s part of why Walmart’s in-store offerings are always changing. They have people constantly evaluating sales numbers to figure out what products they should sell, and which ones simply aren’t selling fast enough.
There are some staple items that will always be carried by any store simply because of the brand name recognition or the vendor fees paid to stock the product, but tweaking store arrangements and layouts have a good science behind them…even if it seems like the company is just trying to aggravate their customers.
I am sure Kroger will survive and you will also see Food Lion do the same thing because all grocery stores use this marketing strategy.
While it is annoying when they move stuff around I’d put up with that before I would go to Food Lion and spend more money. Walmart has the lowest prices and they do not reset very often.
The other point Dan made in his article and no one has commented on I find far more annoying.Product down sizing. I think companies should be required to label their product:NEW SMALLER SIZE, for at least 6 months after reducing the size. They have even made toilet paper rolls more narrow.
Anybody noticed that Bounty paper towels don’t hold together like they used to? This is pretty recent. Perhaps the Koch Bros., who own that product, are cutting corners to save up for all the extra taxes they’re gonna have to pay?
If anyone knows a tougher paper towel, please put it here.
RM, when I think of a grocery store “switcheroo”….I think of the smaller packaging/same price switcheroo.
I just can’t get that bent out of shape over a store rearranging itself. The nature of retail is putting what you think will sell in front of the customer. What you think will sell might change over time. It’s annoying for the first visit or two, but after that, no big deal.
If anyone knows a tougher paper towel, please put it here.
Kimberly Clark “Wypall” best in the business. But you must buy by the case and pay thru the nose. (Commercial Only)
I would disagree with OJ on at least one point. I used to buy the plain puffed wheat cereal in Wal-mart and they quit carrying it.
When I inquired why I was told “We couldn’t keep it in stock”.
What brilliance is that? They have since resumed carrying it but quit carrying the plain puffed rice cereal.
All stores do this. And, if you notice, with chain names they are also not laid out the same either. Milk in a Food Lion can be in the back right or back left of the store, depending on which one it is. Wal-Mart has groceries on the left of some stores (Bonsack) and the right of others (Bedford). Kroger can also be a real adventure in the “organic” vs. “non organic” sections.
As chief Dan George said in the outlaw Josey Wales: Endeavor to perservere.
Bob H, did they mention why they couldn’t keep it in stock? If it was a supply issue, that would explain it. Ordinarily, stores won’t remove a hot-selling item even if it sells out frequently…unless their supplier can’t keep up with the demand. In that case the store sees that as a lost opportunity cost because of the vacant shelf space that goes unfilled. They will then find something else to put in its place so that shelf space is turning a profit.
Ummm….when he went to the Food Lion for the first time, how did he know where to find everything?
He doesn’t have a very logical argument for leaving Kroger unless he just hates the fact it is unionized.
Bob H, on the cereal question – maybe WalMart couldn’t keep it in stock because of poor shipping or replenishment by the manufacturer/distributor. Or maybe they were selling it at a price they determined it wasn’t profitable enough, despite selling lots of it.
While not a fan of WalMart’s grocery section, I’m sure they are just as intuitive as the rest of WalMart.
Kudos to you if your major life challenge is finding where they moved the ketchup, catsup, whatever. Frankly, the little bit of exercise, both mental and physical, that it might require to find the new ketchup aisle would be a boon to most Americans these days.
Can’t find the peanut butter? ..
No surprise…heres why.
http://www.smartmoney.com/spend/family-money/top-5ive-supermarket-tricks-0/
From Joe’s link to the Top Five Supermarket Tricks:
“Surveys find that about 40% of what we actually buy [in the supermarket] are impulse items, products that were not on our list,” says Phil Lempert, a supermarket industry expert.
. . .Suddenly can’t find your favorite jar of peanut butter? Supermarkets regularly move items throughout the store so shoppers walk around longer and buy more stuff, according to Lempert. The tactic also encourages consumers to try new products, which are typically put in the place where top-selling items are usually found.
. . .That’s exactly the plan. “Whenever a supermarket can keep you in the store longer, you’ll spend more money,” Lempert says.
This was pretty much exactly as I outlined it in the original column. I’m surprised Mike 3, with his putative decades of experience in the grocery industry, doesn’t know this stuff.
Dan, Mr Lempert is a learned consultant to the grocery industry and I believe a consultant to Conagra Foods and a contributor to SuperMarket News.The vast majority of his contributions are favorable to the grocery indutry and being helpful to consumers, not encouraging them to loathe the local merchant.Again, I will state that the amount of resets required by a grocery retailer are done for the growth of new products, new segments, and a better shopping experience for their loyal customers. It is not to dupe or intentionally make consumers spend more time shopping with their presumed impulse buys.There are 50000 skus ( stocking keeping units) in a grocery store. If you shop for 30 minutes and have a shopping list, how many impulse items will this create?? You can work through the math.Their are only so many grocers we have in our region to choose from. Instead of calling their merchandising scheme a swicheeroo,,we should thank them for adding to their product assortment and variety. I feel like your premise of swicheero was still incorrect becuause as the shopping dollar continues to shrink with most consumers shopping 2-3 stores for bargains, the last thing they have on their minds is alienating their base. By the way, Dan,it’s okay for them to try to be profitable. Ask the former Mick or Mack employees in Roanoke, They work for Food Lion , Kroger, and WalMart.Hope you can find a bottle of ketchup without too much assistance wherever you shop.
I think this is one of those to-may-to, to-mah-to issues. The industry and their supporters are never going to admit what the resets are for and those who know better are never going to buy any other explanation.
There is always room to feature a new product or better the experience while keeping the organization and availability of products virtually the same. I am just not buying that they do it for my enjoyment and I have yet to find anyone who really does enjoy having to hunt for something you knew where to find two weeks ago.
Smiling here about these little gripes: Given the generally small profit margins of grocery stores, I won’t complain about resets. I have, however, complained about downsizing: One particular dog kibble maker has gone from 50# bags to 31.x# size. I find that move a major annoyance as well as an obvious attempt to conceal a price hike. I called the company directly to registered my opinion: Obviously you raised the price. Ok, but now I have to buy many more bags at a time. Storage, among other things, is an issue. Please–how about simple 25# and 50# bags instead of the numeric scramble? Polite customer service, but no real recourse offered. Now shopping online for alternatives to said brand.
Kroger in Hollins did this about a year ago. Completely changed the entire layout.
Grocery Shrink Ray: http://consumerist.com/category/grocery-shrink-ray/
Also, for what it’s worth, I’ve known about grocery stocking strategies for a very long time. It’s nothing new. The priciest items are at the front and back of the stores so as you go through the aisles you will pass them more often and likely make a purchase.
Also, things that go together are frequently put on different sides of the store. The Kroger I go to, for example, puts eggs on one side of the store and milk completely on the other. Bread is somewhere in the middle.
When you are looking for ketchup, as another example, the priciest will usually be eye level and lower priced things will be where you’d have to look harder to find them.
Nothing new here.
I’ve noticed a lot of the package changes that remove product while appearing to be of the same package size to keep the same price. Many products now have a hollow bell shape in the bottom of the container, which not only helps them cut out a couple ounces of product, but then makes it difficult to get the remaining product out because it’s packed into a relatively small cranny at the bottom.
Paper towels and toilet paper have had the width of the rolls shaved down a little at a time. Some brands are obviously smaller compared to other brands…you can set some rolls of TP side by side and there’s a nearly half-inch difference in some cases. Plus, it’s definitely true that many are now of a lower-quality material that is not as durable or substantial as in the past. Some of that has to do with using post-consumer recycled content, which contains shorter fiber lengths than virgin-harvested timber does.
I know with Kroger, they have generally been renovating and reorganizing almost every store I’ve been to…and Food Lion did the same a couple years ago. Retail outlets must refresh their store appearances from time to time to keep from becoming old, dank, drab, and unapealing…like Kmart. Consumers are simply not drawn to run-down stores…they avoid them. So usually every 10 or so years, stores do a major refresh or at least a substantial bout of maintenance like painting, repairs, etc on top of regular maintenance.
As examples in the NRV, the Walmart stores in Fairlawn and C’burg are not but maybe 12-15 years old, but both have had a couple rounds of refreshing the store aesthetics and layouts. Target in C’burg was barely a decade old when they conducted a major overhaul of that store, and all Food Lions stores (except the now-closed Fairlawn location) got some level of refresh or rebuils in the Radford/Burgs area that I am aware of…and the same with Kroger, although the one in Fairlawn has not had a major overhaul…just some minor upgrades to date. Meanwhile, Kmart hasn’t had any changes in who knows how long, and they’re the least busy of about any store in Christiansburg…and every time I go in there, I feel like I need a shower afterward because of how dirty the store looks.
About my only real complain about retail stores is that quite often, there are specific items that simply are no longer stocked…particularly things like books, movies, music, etc. While we can find pretty much everything else, those items especially, simply because of the breadth of product offerings, are just easier to buy online now. And if this were somewhere more populous, pretty much anything a person could required would have a delivery service available…including groceries.
On comments regarding shrink, it is not shrink unless a store throws it away and nobody buys it to go through the register. Savvy retailers will mark down perishable items to sell at a reduced cost, mostly Kroger and in some instances Food Lion, mostly with meats.Usually done in a cyclical fashion which again allows discounts to a well informed shopper.
If a grocer discontinues an item , it can in some instances be special ordered but you need to meet with management and fill out a request which goes to their office and will perhaps be specially ordered.These discontinued items are passed upon sales within a store and their region which also causes the resets which are need due to a new product mix, not a swicheero by the respective retailer.Thus, new items enter the commodity which have to prove themselves the retailer and the end user-the shopper.Simply stated, slow moving shelf stables will be eliminated and unused perishables are typically marked down. Shop smart my friends!!
From Ruskin-There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.
“On comments regarding shrink, it is not shrink unless a store throws it away and nobody buys it to go through the register. Savvy retailers will mark down perishable items to sell at a reduced cost, mostly Kroger and in some instances Food Lion, mostly with meats.Usually done in a cyclical fashion which again allows discounts to a well informed shopper.”
Mike3, stolen merchandise, which you didn’t address, counts toward shrink. And the brown beef is the best deal (and best tasting meat) in Kroger!
Dan:
“And the brown beef is the best deal (and best tasting meat) in Kroger!”
I recon that’s all the aging/drying it gets.
I could go for a good steak tomorrow.
“I recon that’s all the aging/drying it gets.”
You might be right about that, John.
I do buy marked down meats at Kroger and either freeze it or cook it that day.
I frequently buy the mark-down meat at Kroger…but not if the color is turning. I had enough of that when I was growing up, and the funky smell and taste of the meat because my dad was too cheap to buy stuff that wasn’t already half spoiled.
OtherJohn, isn’t it funny the way our parents shopping habits impact our own. There are things I buy in vast bulk, like toilet paper, because my parents would buy 2 rolls at a time and we were ALWAYS out, and it was so unnecessary as it doesn’t go bad.
I don’t but buy the meat that’s turning colors either, OJ. As long as it still looks good, I’m okay with it.
Brown beef is the best-tasting. Ask any butcher.
It’s a visual turnoff, Dan.