Every Lidl helps? - making do at the top…

The Squeezed Upper Shopping List

Lidl: Parma Prosciutto di Parma
90g, £1.99
- Ocado: Parma Ham, 85g, £3

Lidl: Vitasia Coconut milk, 400ml, 79p
- Waitrose: Essential Coconut Milk, 400ml, £1.89

Lidl: Vitafit Cloudy Apple Juice, 1 Litre, 99p
- Sainsbury’s: Copella Apple Juice 1.25 Litre, £2.80

Lidl: Deluxe British steak & ale pie, 540g, £2.49
- Tesco: steak and ale puff pastry pie, 550g, £3.50

Lidl: Barella Pesto Alla Genovese, 190g, 99p
- Tesco: Sacla Classic Basil Pesto, 190g, £2.20
(on offer at two for £4 until Jan 2)

Source: The Times, Thursday 28th Nov 2013

Problem: How can we get them back in segment, when they have lived a Lidl…?

China thief sends iPhone owner handwritten numbers

The pickpocket is believed to have taken the Apple handset from Zou Bin when they shared a taxi, the Xinhua news agency said.

Zou had nearly 1,000 contact numbers in the device and with no backup copy - like millions of other people around the world - he was more concerned about losing the data than the phone itself, it added.

Given Zou’s business involvement in the pub industry (a tough-guy business in most places), and aping Liam Neeson’s approach in the movie ‘Taken’, Zou’s text to the thief had the desired effect.

"I know you are the man who sat beside me. I can assure you that I will find you," he said in a text message to the thief.

"Look through the contact numbers in my mobile and you will know what trade I am in," he added. "Send me back the phone to the address below if you are sensible."

The thief painstakingly wrote out 11 pages of telephone numbers from the stolen iPhone and sent them and the sim-card to the owner within days…

NAMs outside the pub industry might find it more convenient to back up their phones occasionally…

Champagne vending: Moët goes multichannel?

The world's first Moët  & Chandon vending machine, which has just been installed in the Christmas Shop on the fourth floor of Selfridges, comes stocked with 350 art deco-inspired Swarovski crystal-adorned mini-bottles, a snip at £17.99 each….

Scope for provision of chilled flutes - and perhaps party-hats - to complete the instore theatricality for impulse-tasters…?

Face and barcode scanning a little passe? Ground-Breaking project to brain-scan shoppers...

Dr Paul Mullins and Dr Helen Morgan from the School of Psychology put a shopper through the fMRI scanner.

Psychologists at Bangor University are to brain-scan supermarket-shoppers to test their reactions to promotions and special offers in a major cutting-edge project  with one of Europe’s leading shopping behaviour specialists.

The project, to be carried out jointly by UK-based SBXL and the respected School of Psychology, will ask selected shoppers to simulate an £80 grocery shop in a supermarket, while going through a £3m 20-ton medical fMRI scanner.

A full range of supermarket products are displayed on a screen in front of them and they are asked to make normal shopping choices from a shopping list while faced with a wide range or promotions and special offers. The aim is to identify which part of the brain is involved in making choices by measuring blood flow and brain activity.

Early research suggests that around 23 minutes into their shop, customers begin to make choices with the emotional part of their brain – which can only guess at value for money – rather than the cognitive part of the brain which is capable of computation and logical decision-making. Results also show that after 40 minutes – the time taken for a typical weekly shop – the brain gets tired and effectively shuts down, ceasing to form rational thoughts.

Previous SBXL research that the brain behaves illogically when faced with the sort of information overload that shoppers are faced with in a typical supermarket. Previous research has shown us that nearly 20 per cent of shoppers are likely to put special offers in their basket even if they are more expensive than the normal product, and we know that nearly half of shoppers ignore buy-one-get-one-free items and only choose one.

Given that approximately a quarter of all products on supermarket shelves are on some kind of offer or promotion, this indicates that many millions of pounds at stake in lost margins if the supermarkets are getting it wrong. SBXL estimates that supermarkets and brands consistently give away 23 per cent more margin than they need to.

Hopefully, the research will help suppliers and retailers get to a closer realisation and satisfaction of real shopper 'need', rather than 'want'...

In other words, although the shopper is behaving illogically in selecting a 'special offer' that is more expensive than the normal product, there is perhaps more mileage for the retailer in pointing out the shopper's 'error' than making a few pence extra on the 'mis-purchase'...

A Quality Street in Tesco?

                                                                             pic: Tesco, Church St Hove, Brian Moore 24-11-13

The Squeezed Upper feels the pressure?

                                                pic: Waitrose, Marylebone High Street 23-11-13
Half Price Salmon & Champagne...

Entomophagy - Insect eating - crawls on to Paris menus

In the hip Montmartre neighbourhood of Paris, Le Festin Nu (The Naked Lunch) bistro gives customers the chance to select from a variety of entomological treats.

To accompany your glass of vin naturel (organic wine), you can try palm weevils with beetroot and oil of truffle; water scorpion with preserved peppers and black garlic; or grasshopper with quail's eggs.

Although insect snacks are relatively new to Europe, here's a taster of some of the world's delicacies:

• Colombia - roasted "hormigas culonas" (large-bottomed ants) are popular in certain regions
• Japan - "hachinoko" (boiled wasp larvae) and "zazamushi" (aquatic insect larvae) are two of a number of insect-based Japanese treats
• Nigeria - in some areas people feast on insects including termites, caterpillars, and compost beetle larvae. Queen termites are considered a delicacy and are only eaten by adults, according to the University of Kentucky
• Mexico - grasshopper tacos are just one delicacy to come from the country's estimated 300 to 550 species of edible insects

A report this year from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was seen as a call to action.

So even global KAMs in far flung places can entice the buyer with local delicacies…
…while their UK counterparts experiment on partners and colleagues before introducing it as a negotiation ploy…

Amazon Expanding Its Own Private Label Offering to Supermarket Goods?

Recent postings by Amazon give another reason for keeping an eye on job listings…

Allthings D report that one of the listings, for a financial analyst, mentioned the “launch of the Private Label Business in Consumables.” In another, for a “Senior Product Manager, Consumables Private Label,” Amazon said it is looking for the new hire to help “launch new high quality Amazon-branded products to our global customers.”

The consumables business at Amazon includes categories such as grocery, health, personal care and baby products. The AmazonFresh grocery delivery business also is part of the area.

Although Amazon private label has had a low profile to date, we believe that the ongoing recession is causing the company to mirror the growth of private label in classic retail.

Given the level of Amazon credibility, combined with its service record and responsiveness to consumer demand, the idea seems a ‘no-brainer’.

Either way, surely worth a what-if by branded and private label suppliers alike?

Hat-tip to Lisa Byfield-Green for pointing us at this news item

Alcohol update: the new poitín (poteen) subcategory

How poitín went from illegal moonshine to being sold in Tesco Ireland

Intensive catchup briefing for NAMs:

1. It is one of the most strongly alcoholic drinks on the planet. Homemade poitín can be anywhere between 50 and 90% alcohol by volume vs. average beer 4 to 6% and whiskey 40%. 
2. The first record of it is from the 6th century but it was illegal in Ireland for 300 years and was only legalised in 1997.
3. Purists may not like it but poitín is shedding its reputation as illegal moonshine and is for sale (legally) in shops and pubs around Ireland.

For those without DIY facilities, there are at least five companies in Ireland now selling poitín which can be bought in pubs and off-licences, while London cocktail bar Shebeen is selling eight different types of poitín, including one version made from potatoes in San Francisco. Irish company Coomara Irish Spirits recently made the biggest ever legal shipment of poitín to supermarket chain Tesco, which began stocking the spirit earlier this year.

NB. For those determined to try, the legal version of poitín is 40% and has been granted Geographical Indicative Status by the EU. As you know, this means that in the same way that champagne has to come from a certain area of France and Parmesan cheese can only come from a particular part of Italy, poitín can only come from Ireland.

NAM advice: i.e. Do read the label before you cannot.....
(For more exotic tastes, try Asian Snake Whiskey)

"Phil, about your new taxi-app.........?"

Social supermarket for the poorest Shoppers....

According to The Star, Britain’s cheapest supermarket is to open in Barnsley, South Yorkshire next month - stocked with cut-price food other stores have thrown out.

This members-only shop will carry a comprehensive range of food products priced at 30% of normal retail prices. Twenty more are planned for the UK next year, six in London.

Slow to emerge in the UK, and with 1,000 already open in Spain and Greece, the number of so-called social supermarkets in Austria has risen from around 40 in 2009 up to a current number of about 70. These supermarkets allow people at risk of poverty to purchase their daily groceries at lower cost than in normal supermarkets.

These supermarkets are commonly organised as charitable foundations. They collect excess or rejected goods from normal supermarkets and sell these to the needy at rock-bottom prices. While the quality of these products is normal, their packaging may be damaged, they could be mislabelled, or they may be approaching their expiration date. Shelves are mostly filled with products satisfying daily needs, such as dairy products, bread, pasta, fruit and vegetables, but also household products, toiletries, and books. These goods are usually one to two thirds cheaper than at regular supermarkets; bread is often free. Only people with per capita incomes of less than around 900 euros are entitled to purchase at social supermarkets.

Whilst social supermarkets represent an outlet for retailers' surplus/near-waste products, this emerging channel has to provide an opportunity for suppliers to find a socially beneficial outlet for suitable products.

...and for the really imaginative retailer, why not convert an outlet scheduled for closure, and really make a difference?  

If Poundland is good enough for Jane Asher?

Then perhaps its time to add discounters to your mainstream trade strategies...

News that Jane Asher will launch a Poundland bakeware collection should be a final indicator that suppliers need to factor budget retailing into their long-term trade strategies... The range will be rolled out across Poundland's 490-plus UK and Irish shops in spring 2014. Each item will sell for £1, including multipacks such as three wooden spoons and six silicone cases.

Asher said: "In my new Poundland range this will no longer be a problem as all the baking essentials are covered and offer amazing value for money. The range is very pretty, and comes in four pastel colours which can be mixed and matched. I've also included six quick, easy and delicious cake mixes."

In other words, a serious 'first' in celebrity endorsement for Poundland, while Aldi's Glen Orrin whisky makes an offer your cannot refuse at £55 for a 30 year old treat worth £150...

But added to share gains for Aldi and Lidl, and a prospect of flatline demand (real volume rather than political spin) for the next decade means that discounters deserve a permanent place in your long term mainstream trade strategies...

Meanwhile, if caviar is good enough for Lidl....

Lidl Caviar - playing each end of the 'squeezed middle'?

                                                                                        pic: Brian Moore - Lidl, Brighton (14.11.2013)

Have we all underestimated the discounters?

M&S Pre-launch pricing, or inflationary anticipation?

                                                        pic: Brian Moore - M&S Shoreham Road, BN43 6TD (9.11.2013)

Jewelled fruit cake, £8, will be £12....

Stage 1: Pre-launch price

Stage 2: Launch price

Stage 3: ......................?

Delicious, by the way...!

Shops Closed, meaning c-l-o-s-e-d!

                                                                                             pic: Brian Moore - Preston Street, Brighton

..........until an acknowledgement of overcapacity allows a return to domestic accommodation

Who’s minding the shopper?

The old deathbed story raises an interesting dilemma in retailing today:
An elderly shopkeeper on his deathbed asks for his wife and then for each of his six children. When the last one replies “I’m here” the old guy demands: “then who’s minding the shop?”

In other words, if the key retail stakeholders are all pre-occupied with survival and continuity of the business, then who’s minding the shopper?

Most of us accept the fact that, given the extent of their loyalty-data insight, compared with that of the supplier, and if knowledge defines ownership, the major retailers now ‘own’ the shopper. Despite the fact that a retailer’s knowledge is mainly derived from analysis of shopping behaviour, their increasing share of consumption via own label growth also means that they have potential access to the shopper’s consumers, and their consumption behaviour.

They are thus capable of leveraging shopper insight in also taking ownership of the consumer…

Unfortunately, ownership does not guarantee action in the best interests of the shopping consumer…
This means that brand owners need to enter the aisle and ‘hand-hold’ the shopper in an attempt to complete the intended purchase in favour of brand-consumer and supplier…

More in this month’s edition of NamNews, now in your mailbox.

Understanding the shopping-consumer

At the moment of purchase a shopping-consumer’s world is all about one SKU, with potential access to all possible alternatives, literally at their fingertips…

Meanwhile, a retailer is coming from a perspective that covers the entire shop’s offering, a world of up to 50,000 SKUs, an expert in selection.

This classic case of depth vs. breadth can be synergistic in that the shopping-consumer can be reassured by the assumption that the retailer, as expert, has surveyed the entire market on their behalf and is now presenting the best offer available. Moreover, the shopper is also taking for granted the implied endorsement i.e. that the product contains ‘what it says on the tin’, especially given the fact that the shopping-consumer may also be making the purchase-decision on behalf of family, etc.

One can only imagine the shopper’s reaction when even a cursory check reveals they have been misled, or even short-changed, either financially, or in terms of what they expected to receive for the money... Moreover, they have a hand-held means of communicating their dis-satisfaction well beyond the walls of the store…

Whereas, if the retailer plays by even the rudimentary rules of consumer marketing, and meets or even exceeds shopper-expectation, they can harness the positive aspects a shopper’s ability to ‘tell a friend’, endorse a purchase and even recommend a visit… 

Looks not tips the key to a good table in Paris

For the handful of NAMs that still treat buyer-lunches as a trade investment, latest news from Paris indicate a need for new facial KPIs in making a non-refuse lunch-offer to key buyers...

According to satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, it's the quality of diners' looks -- not the size of their tips -- that make the difference at Le Georges, the upmarket restaurant on the top floor of the Pompidou Centre, and the Cafe Marly, which occupies a prime spot within the Louvre museum.

Two waitresses who have recently quit Le Georges told the weekly that they were ordered to sort customers into the good looking and the, ahem, less good looking. Those who made the cut were seated in prominent positions at the front of the restaurant while those who got the thumbs down were ushered off to the back, preferably out of sight.

At the Cafe Marly, the pavement terrace was reportedly declared an ugly-free zone with anyone seeking to reserve by phone systematically told, "We'll do our best but we can't guarantee it," pending a looks appraisal on arrival.

Mobile KamTip:
To bypass the screening process, why not attach a badly lit pic of George Clooney/Sandra Bullock to your mobile request for a down-to-earth table in a spacious corner?

Have a real weekend in unreal times, from the NamNews Team!

See it, snap it, buy it: the new way to shop online...

"We shop with our eyes, so why not search with a photo?" asks Jenny Griffiths, founder and CEO of Snap Fashion, the fashion search engine that uses pictures instead of words.

Her idea was born out of her frustration at trying and failing to find affordable equivalents to the designer clothes she found in fashion magazines. When regular search engines failed to quench her affordable fashion thirst - there are after all only so many ways you can describe an item of clothing to Google - the 26-year-old realised that her quest would be markedly easier if she could just submit a photo of the item she was searching for.

Snap Fashion obviously meets a shopper-need, but savvy NAMs will appreciate that there is a much bigger idea lurking here…

In other words, this is all about pattern and shape recognition. So anytime you see an ornament, poster, piece of furniture, hairstyle, gadget, or even a foreign-language version pack of a ‘well-known’ brand and ‘you don’t like to ask’, a simple pic will help you to find an affordable source..

In fact, all it would take is for a company called Amazon to adapt the software to their site to flesh out the real potential….

"clicks to bricks" - Online retailers move into the High Street

Rapha Cycle Club on Brewer Street, near Piccadilly Circus

"Retail observers have been significantly overestimating our use of online and digital technology for shopping - we like shopping in stores," says Nicole Flasch-Mihalko of LIM College, which carried out a survey with the National Retail Federation in the US.

A number of online retailers have taken the survey findings to heart....
For instance, Rapha, which started as an online business in 2004 selling high-performance cyclewear, opened its first store or Cycle Club in San Francisco in 2011. Now it also has branches in London, Osaka, New York and Sydney.

Rapha says its stores have been a big hit with customers, offering a showcase for its clothing but also acting as a place to absorb cycle culture - to drink coffee, join in organised cycle rides and watch major races on big screens.

For High Street landlords with vacant space to rent as well as online start-ups this trend is good news, says Ross Bailey, founder and chief executive of Appear Here. His firm brings together shop landlords and mainly e-commerce entrepreneurs, with the aim of making renting a pop-up or permanent physical shop easier and more flexible.

The key idea is online retailers - Ronliners -, with no baggage or no preconceived notion of what works in classic retailing, but especially with little to fear from the emergence of online, can focus on the shopper's experiential interaction with the product, secure in the knowledge that they have already secured the ongoing deal...

...while their traditional competitors focus on restricting access to the instore wifi... 

Perks of an MP include free snuff...

MPs are being supplied with snuff at taxpayers’ expense, according to an official guide to life in Parliament.

“No, no, Minister, just one pinch per nostril”

The Customer's P&L - A road-map for your business?

Despite the fact that using a customer's latest P&L for guidance can be a little like driving via the rear-view mirror, five years after the global financial crisis, the effects are now truly evident in most retailer's Annual Accounts.

For instance, where retailers were producing ROCEs of 15+%, Net Margins of 5+% and Stockturns of 20 times per annum, latest results are showing performances of half these levels, or worse...

With one exception: Walmart, the retail elephant in the room.

This global player, on a low-price platform, continues to generate an ROCE of 19.6%, a Net Margin of 5.5% and a Stockturn of 10.7 times/annum, thereby demonstrating that it is still possible to achieve these results in retail... 

(incidentally, for those with an eye for detail, Walmart's 'low' stockturn reflects their mix of categories and the geographical scale of the US. When and if Walmart ever comes under ROCE pressure, they can simply insist on smaller, more frequent deliveries from 'eager-to-jump' suppliers...)

In turn, Walmart's performance puts pressure on other retailer's to revert at least to their pre-crisis performance levels in order to support their share prices.

...and as you know, a low share price encourages takeover bids, even in well-ordered, 'growing' economies...

In other words, retailers need suppliers, more than ever before.

In turn, NAMs need to be able to cost out each element of the remuneration package - margin, terms, trade-investment and deductions - and demonstrate each element's impact on the retailer's P&L and Balance Sheet, using the supplier's own P&L to measure progress...

Hopefully a little more engaging than making endless excuses ref inadequate trade investment funds...? 

(For a focused discussion on how this can work in your case, pls give me a call +44 (0)7977 273409)

UK shoppers replace loyalty cards with phones

A new survey from CloudZync via a poll of 2,000 consumers shows that while the average leather wallet now contains four loyalty cards, people have access to six schemes on their handsets.

Supermarkets are falling behind in the digital race - 92% of respondents have a physical card for Tesco, Sainsbury's or one of their rivals yet only 36% have a mobile scheme.

Furthermore, loyalty card users have on average £83 worth of redeemable points across their schemes at any point in time, and UK shoppers have cashed in on over £4 billion worth of points over the past year.

However, around £150 million in points remain unclaimed. Explaining why, 27% say that it takes too long to start earning benefits, 18% say they don't carry their cards in their wallets, and 14% don't remember to add on their points even when paying in-store.

In other words, traditional retailers are operating in ‘inertia-land’, on the assumption that low redemption rates will continue…

However, as with the infamous Hoover air-miles fiasco, if consumers are presented with more effective ways of managing their loyalty point redemption, current levels of inertia could disappear and be replaced by soaring redemption-levels, well beyond retailer expectations…

An app-nightmare in the making? 

Cocktails with aspirations - something special for the weekend?

NB. Large detailed version here