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CHICAGO — Grocery retailing is a complicated business, one that attendees at the FMI Connect conference here last month learned is likely get even more complex, with changes in consumer behavior, food preferences and the competitive environment reshaping the business.
Grocery retailing is a complicated business, one that attendees at the FMI Connect conference here last month learned is likely get even more complex, with changes in consumer behavior, food preferences and the competitive environment reshaping the business.
Leslie Sarasin, president and chief executive officer of the Food Marketing Institute, shed new light on who does the grocery shopping and the implications that has for retailers. Drawing on FMI’s 41st annual "U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends" report, she noted that the homogeneous supermarket consumer of the past — a mother who developed the menu for family meals, shopped and cooked — has been supplanted by various customers who each approach food shopping from a somewhat different perspective.
"More and more people are playing a larger role in grocery shopping," she said during her keynote address. "In fact, 57% of the population reports that it does all or most of the grocery shopping; 26% says it shares in at least 50% of the grocery shopping, resulting in a whopping 83% of U.S. adults who participate in at least half the food shopping for their household.
"Now, if that feels high, it might be due to continued battling perceptions within a household regarding that which constitutes a ‘primary shopper,’ with one person in the house defining it as the number of trips made to the market, and the other in the household defining it as the quantity of groceries purchased. Regardless of the metric used, grocery shopping has clearly moved into shared territory in the household division of labor."
Retailers must learn how to appeal to men and women in each of the four types of food shopper identified in the research — self, primary, secondary and shared — because they all respond differently to "nutrition labels, in-store sampling, print advertisements, and recommendations from friends, family and word of mouth," Sarasin noted.
"I recommend [the trends report] for your consideration if you’re interested in learning how to market effectively to those within those multiple bull’s-eyes."
Supermarkets start from a position of relative strength as they contend with changes in the marketplace. Sarasin cited figures from the trends report that show 45% of consumers view their primary food store as being on their side in the quest for health and wellness, ahead of all other participants in the food supply chain except farmers, who had a 61% favorable rating.
One way in which FMI and its members are working to enhance the well-being of consumers is by encouraging them to share at least one more family meal at home per week than they now do.
Citing research conducted at Columbia University and Cornell University, Sarasin said, "These studies confirm empirically what I think most of us know intuitively. Families who eat together more frequently, defined as dinner together five or more times a week, are more likely to have kids who report having excellent relationships with their parents, know what going on in their lives, and eat healthier foods."
By persuading families to eat at home together more often, the supermarket industry can do well by doing good.
"If just half of the 47 million households with children joined with us to commit to one more meal at home a week — and remember this is only one piece of the population we could be recruiting — but if we got only half of that group, it would translate into 94 million more servings per week," Sarasin commented.
"Looked at another way, 94 million servings per week in the home at a rather meager average of $6 per person would result in increased revenue of $564 million per week for the food retail industry. As noted Sen. Everett Dirksen once observed, ‘a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.’ "
Achieving that goal won’t be easy. Consumers are more time-pressed than ever, and supermarkets face unprecedented levels of competition — both from traditional retailers in other trade classes and from e-commerce services.
