I got several reactions to yesterday’s breaking news about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filing suit to block Kroger’s proposed $24.6 billion acquisition of Albertsons.
MNB fave Glen Terbeek wrote:
So much mass marketing mentality. We are past the 1960’s. What about maximizing market performance of each local store and its shoppers through creating local values added above and beyond distribution value?
I hate to say it, but that simply is not the preferred strategy at many retailers.
Also got this reaction to the continued claim by Kroger that it lowers prices:
I have been reading your newsletter for years.
I worked in IT for Safeway for many years.
Kroger owns Ralphs.
Ralphs advertises low prices.
Their price for a gallon of 2 percent milk was $4.49.
Target – next door was charging $3.39.
I now avoid Ralphs and do more shopping at Target.
I am in Southern California.
To be clear, this is just a snapshot. But I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of such snapshots in the coming weeks and months.
And from another reader:
I read that Capital One and Discover card are merging, will the FTC allow this, or does backdoor politics (campaign donations/payoffs) come into play?
I suggested the other day that I think it is likely that this deal also will get tough FTC scrutiny. But we’ll see.
Reacting to our continued conversation about self-checkout, MNB reader Kurt Erickson wrote:
I am actually recently retired from Vallarta Supermarkets, headquartered in Sylmar, CA. I was intimately involved with the self checkout (SC) and I recall the first time that NCR presented SC and anyone who paid attention could easily see that the sales person from NCR pretty much had decision makers leaning towards Yes, but then he had to go on for another 120-150 minutes. What’s the old saying, when you get yes, shut-up. At any rate, this salesman could not. SC was a no go at that time.
I later recruited a VP of Continuous Improvement, after 860 resumes, and we discussed SC often. He had experience with SC all over the east coast, including a fairly accurate measurement of the shrink at SC, by chain.
Maybe 18 months past the first debacle from NCR, we still had (very private) a real uphill battle with ownership, for all the reasons one might expect and they should expect. This time we took a different approach. We wanted to test SC in one store, perfect it there and perform a reasonable roll-out, such as all stores in 12-16 months, which later became 6, post approval. Ownership was at that store making certain that the location of the SC’s were where he expected. We ended up pretty close to his expectations.
This next part is very difficult for people to believe as it costs labor. We was able to convince ownership that we needed a SC company lead. We wanted Director, but it was far more important to get the right person than title, and we did. We then promoted 3-5 customer service managers to SC managers. We typically ran just one six-pack with the podium register near the front. We convinced all that could be convinced that this position of SC managers was the only position in the store where someone had to be there during all operating hours. SC cannot run W/O that a manager managing the SC. This was the key.
I could go into all the responsibilities of the SC managers, but the number one responsibility was to greet every customer and see that they were comfortable using SCO. We didn’t lose 10 bps on our wall to wall margins, because, we took 100% responsibility for SC.
So what you’re saying is, you did it right.
Larry Polyner of the National Co+op Grocers also chimed in:
I am extremely interested in what comes from this discussion on self checkouts – I don’t think I will be able to get the NGA conference into my calendar at this point with it only being 12 days away. I recently was made aware of a project that elected to remove a security feature from their self scans in an effort to reduce the cost by about $18,000. Though I was extremely skeptical, the reasoning that was shared anecdotally with me was something like “well, Walmart has removed this security feature from all of their units as it was not necessary in the general operation scanning and cashing out of the product” If in fact they are closing down self scans, are these units the fully engineered with all security and scaling/scanning capacities or are they modified or reduced in some capacity?
Though this topic is the most pertinent to the conversation upcoming, I also always get the question “where should self scans fall into the overall front end layout? How many?” I think there is a significant amount of observed data, but not sure there is something more practical that applies more to the medium or small grocery retailer.
While the most visible may be Target and Walmart, I think that the front end of these particular big boxes are equivalent to the entire retail square footage of the average grocery store – especially in my world of organic or natural – and some specialty. In the big box, they usually have two entry/exits due to their size and are clearly focused on only reducing the front end labor. When you have that kind of square footage, you can remove 6 belted conventional stands from each side, create a “corral” situation with at least a dozen self-scans and only operate with opening two or four of the remaining 16 conventional belted in the middle, placing your slowest and most engaging cashiers to further encourage the
Based on this perceived scenario, the self scan vendors can make the claim that the self scan registers should be the first option to walk into as a shopper finishes their shopping experience, but I think this is only a potential resolution for those big boxes. For the average grocery store that does not have 168’ x 36’ of dedicated front end space for the front end and check out experience, I think there are quire a few more parameters that come into play before you decide where the self scans fall into the overall layout of self scans and conventional.
As I mentioned above, I will be very interested to see what is revealed after the conference, but also was wondering if you were familiar with studies or data that has been shared as it relates to how many to add versus how many conventional are taken away, best location and criteria to determine the best location. It is probably evident by the tone of this message that I am not in favor of roping off or removing. I do feel that they have their place and there is significant interest by an up and coming demographic. I also see this as one step closer to that new, modern front end as we move further into the AI world and further away from that old conventional layout and check out process within the grocery industry.
Reacting to my lauding of AT&T’s handling of last week’s mass cell service outage, one MNB reader wrote:
I was also impressed by AT&T response. I was actually at LAX that day and what a fiasco it caused at airports for those that had their ticket in their app!! Alaska Air was on top of it asking everyone to check their phones and come to the gate in advance if needed to verify their ticket and give them a printout so the boarding time would not delayed.
Wow. I never thought about that.
And finally, MNB reader Thomas Parkinson had this comment about my suggestion that the Apple Vision Pro could be used to watch sporting events in new and compelling ways:
Meta Quest is already working with the NBA where you can watch live games on their goggles. Pretty cool.
It does look very cool.
The post Your Views: Mass Marketing Lives appeared first on MNB.
View Original Article
