I can tell you easily enough what I’ll be buying in the next year. Fifty gallons of whole milk and of soy milk. Fifty boxes of Frosted Mini Wheats. Fifty loaves of bread. Thirty bunches of bananas. Thirty pounds of ground beef. Thirty pounds of sliced ham and of sliced turkey. Thirty dozen eggs.
There’s no mystery about any of this. In the next year I’m going to need food, and a lot of that food is always the same.
So why can’t I buy in bulk?
You stand to gain by putting me on a payment plan that would lock in discounted prices on a regular list, provided that I pick up the items from your store each week. Not only would you secure my constant patronage, you would also ensure my frequent presence in your store, making it more likely that I’ll use you when I’m buying food not on my regular list.
You should allow me to create a weekly list, a biweekly list, and a monthly list. You should give me discounted prices on these items that are locked in for a year at a time since I will be committing to buying them from you in large quantity. You should give me the choice to pay for my annual cart all at once for an additional discount, or through a monthly payment plan.
In addition, you should offer me discounts if I commit large sums of cash up-front to you. It’s no mystery that this year I’ll spend at least $1,000 on food not on my regular list. For every $1,000 I put on a non-refundable payment card tied only to your store, I should receive an extra $50 in purchasing power.
These are hard times, times when consumers like me are being squeezed tighter and tighter. The field is wide open for a grocery store like yours to secure my loyalty by offering innovative cost-saving ways to buy from you.
September 10, 2006 at 6:46 am |
Pretty easy to see why it hasn’t been implemented. Grocery profits are razor thin, and half of items you see in flyers or advertised, the company is actually LOSING money on. To further cut prices would provide nothing to the company, who would still have to order their stock in regular intervals, prepare and package fresh foods, not saving a dime at all. The only real way it would help is to keep the customer shopping at the same store instead of switching between itself and it’s competitors.
September 10, 2006 at 11:04 am |
I’d think guaranteeing regular sales of specific items would actually help with stocking items, as the store would have a better ability to anticipate its foot traffic week to week. As it stands now, whoever enters a grocery store does so willy-nilly, of their own free will. I’d think grocery stores would crave a way to guarantee that I’d show up week in and week out. This would be similar to the subscription-style pricing that a company like Microsoft would just love to embrace with Windows so that it can guarantee and predict monthly revenue.
I’m certainly not asking grocery stores to take a hit. This is capitalism, after all. What I’m suggesting is that the grocery industry isn’t thinking forward far enough — and that higher sales volume, and therefore greater profits, can be achieved through a little give-and-take that ensures customer loyalty. That kind of relationship building is the foundation of good business.
September 11, 2006 at 11:57 am |
Bulk buying is why God made Costco.
But you’re right; there’s no grocery store that does not require a (free) ‘membership’ card to trigger many discount prices, but that’s not enough to keep me in just one store. I carry cards for three different grocery chains in my wallet at all times, and I get nearly equivalent discounts at each store. It would be a cinch to attach a total dollar incentive program to such a card. If you spend X dollars at grocery chain Y within a year, you will automatically get a credit of Z dollars, which will show up at the register just by using the same card. That would make me decide on just one store to be loyal to.
This is similar in concept to a post you had a while ago about a midwestern gas station chain that allowed pre-purchase (price lock-in) of thousands of gallons of gas.
September 11, 2006 at 12:23 pm |
Yup. That really cool concept was covered here:
seedlings: buying gas for the future
September 12, 2006 at 7:05 pm |
Thats a good idea Mike. Every winter I sign a contract with my oil company that allows me to lock in a price. If it goes lower i still get the lower price, if it goes up, then I get the previously agreed price. This allows the oil company to pre-pay to their supplier and nogotiate a lower price on my behalf. Why can’t your supermarket do the same thing with beef. If they have customers locked in, then they can pre-pay to the large beef company and nogotiate a lower price. They could prepay with their milk farm and so on. Having a locked in predictable consumer (and supplier) is extremly valuble. The first company to do it would obviously gain the most locked in buisness making it hard for others to compete.
As far as those cards you need to get the discount. That does nothing but piss me off. They use them for collecting data in all differnet ways, but your really not getting any discount that you would have not got before. I have actually walked out of Shaws Supermarket because they wouldn’t give me a sale price unless I walked over tothe sevice desk and filled out a application for a card. This happened to me several times. The Local Stop and Shop supermarket will run a card through for you if you don’t want to get one. Why should I volunteer my personal information for no real discount?
Sad to say but a Super Walmart with grocerys has opened up in my town and I am now doing most of my shopping there. I would rather support my local supermarket, but I can’t afford to. Walmart is just so cheap. Where else am I gonna get a box of creamsickles for 99 cents?
September 12, 2006 at 7:42 pm |
I know what you’re saying about Wal*Mart. When we lived in North Carolina we were literally within five minutes of six grocery stores. So one night my wife and I made a list of twelve standards items (gallon of skim milk, loaf of wheat bread, box of Frosted Mini Wheats, pound of ground beef, carton of Edy’s ice cream, etc.), and spent two hours driving to the six stores to price all the items. Then at home we punched everything into an Excel spreadsheet and determined which store was cheapest. Bi-Lo was most expensive at around $28 for the cart; the average price rang up at around $23; the second-lowest was somewhere around $21.
Wal*Mart crushed everyone with a total of around $18. It was incredible. We didn’t buy everything at Wal*Mart — especially not produce, which tended to look old and picked-over. And the Wal*Mart shopping experience wasn’t the most pleasurable. But making the most of Wal*Mart shopping seemed like a budgetary duty for our family.
In Maryland, Super Wal*Marts (which have the grocery section) are all but illegal due to grocery store unions. I understand what you’re saying about supporting local businesses, but on the other hand, look at how much more my family is paying for groceries. We’re paying about 16% more for groceries because Super Wal*Marts aren’t allowed here.
September 13, 2006 at 8:46 am |
Jim; if you are worried about your personal information, there’s no reason (I can see) that you can’t sign up for a card as I. M. Phaque, address 123 Nota Street. As a matter of fact, I have a Vons (Safeway) card with a messed-up magnetic strip, and it’s from an era when I had a phone number that I don’t remember anymore, so it’s basically useless, since I don’t want to have to wait for the teller to manually type in the whole number each time.
So whenever I go to Vons, I use my in-laws’ card, by punching in their phone number. The tellers sometimes call me by my name (reaped from my debit card?) and sometimes by their name (obviously from their Safeway membership), but nobody has ever remarked on the name difference.
September 13, 2006 at 8:53 am |
BTW, I guess this is a good a venue as any to comment on nasal applications of dental sucker straws. I also daydream about that a lot: how hard could it be, and such a relief! I mentioned this to somebody once, and they told me that sinus cavities are somehow sealed, but also susceptible to seepage, so you can’t get devices in there (short of surgery), but they can fill or drain snot gradually over time.
I have no idea whether that is anatomically correct, but I suppose it is quite possible that the path from nostril to congestion is difficult to navigate with a tool.
Somebody once told me of a similar concept, however, in which congestion is not sucked out, but flushed out, by means of a warm saline solution being pumped into the nose. Apparently it is not comfortable, and it takes some breathing skill to do it without drowning, but when mastered, it works a treat! I just wish I knew a product name to look up!
September 13, 2006 at 9:02 am |
Google is our friend! The answer is “Neti Pot”, and it apparently comes to us from Yoga. I was going to provide just a sterile, informative Wikipedia article, but this page is too funny to pass up! They tried to follow the traditional advertising strategy of using a clean, healthy, attractive blonde model, but it’s hard to take seriously anyone with a stream of water pouring from their nose!
September 13, 2006 at 9:08 am |
There’s even a video!.
September 13, 2006 at 9:17 am |
Sorry for taking over this thread here, but one last one, I promise! Here’s an NPR story discussing nasal irrigation.
September 13, 2006 at 11:00 am |
RubeRad’s sudden run of nasal-oriented comments is in response to this bit of randomness I posted in the sidebar, and which will soon be replaced by another bit of randomness:
Yes, the appearance of an attractive blonde with a flow of water pouring out one nostril is, indeed, remarkable — but nothing drives nasal irrigation home like that video! Thanks for such a fantastic link that none of us will soon forget.
September 13, 2006 at 11:34 am |
I’ve been having some earwax buildup lately. Would the Neti Pot work on my ears? (Perhaps only on the ears of a person who would ask such a question …)
A little photoshopping would make for a great image! Maybe this could be the inspiration for a fake product — the “Crani Pot.” Research shows, after all, that regular cranial irrigation can ward off headaches and migraines …
September 13, 2006 at 1:24 pm |
Why not extend your Crani Pot to an all-purpose “Nook & Cranny Pot”?
September 13, 2006 at 1:48 pm |
That’s fine as long as there’s always an open route for the saline water to flow. What goes in one way must come out another.
Could make for some amusing applications …