The Perfect Store
Convenience retailers know that making the most of their store means understanding what their customers want from it. The better you do this, the more profitable and successful your business will be.
Shoppers are not in love with convenience stores, but they are in love with convenience.
Stocking the right range, and merchandising it so that shoppers can find what they are looking for easily is important. But the other key to increasing sales is understanding what each shopper’s mission is when they visit a convenience store.
There are five main convenience Shopper Missions:
Top-Up is all about customers who are stocking up before next week’s supermarket shop. It’s often staples – such as bread, milk or tea.
Food for Now means hungry customers. They’re looking for sandwiches, crisps, soft drinks, snacks and confectionery to eat right away
Meal for Tonight is to find something to eat later – ready-meals, pasta and sauces, desserts and wine
Entertainment is about products to be shared, either at home or out with friends. Think crisps, wines and spirits and boxed confectionery
Newsagent is when customers pop into to buy a paper and perhaps cigarettes or a lottery ticket
Creating the Perfect Store...
Unilever has tracked the behaviour of customers on each of these missions.
The results make fascinating viewing for any retailer who wants to grow their business, so click on the video (right) to view.
Partners for Growth came up with the perfect store layout. It makes use of global best practice on space, layout flows and adjacencies of fixtures, together with the look and feel of the store and shopper communication.
When these principles were applied to stores the number of items in basket saw an 8% uplift.
Applying Shopper Missions to your store...
No two stores are the same so your own customers’ missions will depend a great deal on where your store is and who your customers are. But the principle of matching your layout to the most important shopper missions in your store will make life easier for your customers.
For small retailers with only one chiller, for example, it’s a good idea to use milk as a beacon to drive more traffic to the fixture but still to categorise by shopping mission within the unit and ensure clusters are next to the equivalent ambient shopping mission-based categories on nearby shelves.
And if you do that, they’re much more likely to keep coming back and much more likely to spend more…
Top 10 tips for the perfect store!
- Keep windows clear so shoppers can see inside
- Keep aisles wide and shelves low
- Avoid clutter – don’t use too many dump-bins or stacks
- Put baskets in the top-up area
- Communicate promotions clearly at the fixture
- Make queueing and transactions quick and easy
- Keep the store clean and tidy
- Ensure the right range and with Partners for Growth best seller lists and planograms
- Use Partners for Growth’s layout guidelines to ‘zone’ according to your customers’ needs
- Use simple signage to communicate these zones: e.g. ‘Food for now’
Store Layout
Follow Ramesh Shingadia on his journey to refit his convenience store!
Londis retailer Ramesh Shingadia of Southwater, West Sussex, one of Partners for Growth’s Retailer Advisory Panel, officially unveiled his new look store on Saturday 26 April 2014.
Shopper Missions
Unilever research to find the “perfect store” layout for convenience stores shows that if you’re cramming your store with products and crowding your windows with promotional activity, you’re going wrong…
