UK supermarket profits from customer-driven innovation
Asda, the UK’s second largest supermarket chain, reported its twelfth successive quarter of market out-performance with underlying sales rising by 8.4% last week as they enhanced their innovation on the back of new programs to engage consumers.
The company attributed the results to a heightened focus on value – assisted by thousands of ‘rollbacks’ and improved private label quality as well as new innovations derived from customer insights.
Asda announced that more than £60m (A$120m) had been spent on improving the quality of their private label goods, which had performed well in the turbulent economic environment. They also hoped to better engage their employees with the message of value they were trying to convey to shoppers by encouraging participation in a “Save £1 A Day” challenge.
Customer insight
“Understanding how customer behaviour is changing and being able to respond quickly has never been more important than in the current economic environment,” the supermarket chain noted.
In order to better capture the feeling of their customers they developed Asda Pulse of the Nation – a panel of 16,000 shoppers, ‘Tell ASDA’ – an online survey where customers give feedback on their local store, and ‘Saving You Money TV’ – an interactive YouTube channel that allows customers to submit their own money saving tips and ideas.
“This customer insight has a direct impact on product innovation and offer,” Asda advised. “When customers said they wanted Easter to be a family celebration, it developed a broader selection of offers to enable them to feed, clothe and entertain their entire family.”
It also led to them discovering the desire of customers to gain new inspiration for home cooking. This will see them introduce new recipe ideas that feed a family of four for £1 a head including turkey stir fry and salmon pie. The move is representative of the trend toward supermarkets offering alternatives to restaurant and take-away fare. Already, Coles has reported success with a ‘Feed your family for under $10’ campaign, which followed the similar ‘Feed your family for a fiver’ promotion by Sainsbury’s in the UK. In fact, so common has the push toward offering in-store advice for cheap and simple family meals become, that Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose recently dubbed it “the most aped promotion of any promotion around“.
“Customers continue to tell us what’s important to them, and we have hit the sweet spot by finding the right balance between lowering prices, improving quality and reducing our costs,” ASDA’s Chief Financial Officer, Judith McKenna, suggested.
International real estate and business agency CB Richard Ellis ( CBRE) has issued a report ( June 2...
The Apple Press is a New Zealander company based in Hawke's Bay. They are on a mission to bring wha...
Over the weekend, Amazon acquired Whole Foods, a premium American supermarket chain which only sells...
An investigation by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on...
A Fijian company has identified the recent record high world prices for vanilla beans as a business...
This article was written by ABC News on 26 May 2020. Australia's largest organic dairy company ...
United States based food company, McCormick, has posted increased sales results after acquiring Aust...
Dairy alternative drinks, such as soy and almond milk, accounted for 6 per cent of total global dair...
We are agreen company who use water to take actives from plant material, we use the change in polarity of water to replace other less green methods of plant extracion. Please visit our web page to see our method or contact us via our e-mail.
Regards Ken Davison