Retailing & Marketing Trends

• Canadian supermarket chain Loblaw is purchasing T&T Supermarkets, a Canadian chain of 17 stores catering to the country’s Asian minority. The move is seen as part of Loblaw’s efforts to diversify its holdings and satisfy the growing interest in ethnic foods.

• Restaurants aren’t the only sector of the food business feeling the pinch: over the first half of this year, nearly 700 c-stores have gone away, a reflection of the blue-collar focus of the channel where job losses have been more apparent. But all the news in the channel isn’t bad: 7-Eleven plans to open hundreds of stores in California to take advantage of the real estate slump by hammering hard rental bargains with landlords.

• Dutch retail giant Ahold is the owner of the U.S. chain Stop & Shop, and has reported 2nd quarter sales up 16% to $5.393bn (€3.808bn) . The company’s worldwide sales were $9.107bn (€6.43bn) up 12%. from €5,769 million in the same period a year ago.

• Digital couponing continues to spread: Scanbuy is partnering with Du Pont and Printpack to put 2-D barcodes on snacks that would allow consumers to retrieve product information AND get new offers (surprise!). An app gets downloaded to the user’s cell phone, who then uses the phone’s camera to scan the barcode.

• Recently-opened Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets in Southern California bring the U.S. total to 124. U.K. giant retailer Tesco had targeted 200 stores by last February, but has struggled to find the right balance of products and marketing.

• President Obama used a visit to a Kroger store in Bristol, VA to host a town hall discussion on health care reform.

• Do you know where your pizza is? Apparently a lot of consumers want to know, so the packaging tracking made commonplace by FedEx and UPS is coming to a Domino’s near you. UPS had a paltry 100K online tracking requests per month in 1995; by last December, the total had reached 27.3MM PER DAY. Both UPS and FedEx now send out constant updates to shippers, and Domino’s Pizza Tracker does just what the name implies. But it doesn’t end there: FlightAware keeps you informed about any domestic airline flight, The Chicago Transit Authority’s “Bus Tracker” online system shows where every bus is, and the New York City Stimulus Tracker keeps you up-to-date on where those funds are being used. I think things have gone too far, though, with the website that tracks your baby’s sleeping, eating and pooping. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

• While it would seem a no-brainer that consumers would like freebies, it turns out cultural differences disprove conventional wisdom: A study by New York’s Baruch College School of Business found that American-born consumers are happier with unexpected gifts than those in Hong Kong and Taiwan, along with Asians living temporarily in the U.S. Asians overall preferred gifts tied into luck (e.g., a winning ticket), while Westerners like rewards for hard work, loyalty or just coming in at all.

• Already allowed by the government’s rules to say “no trans fats” on the labels of its soft (tub) spreads in the U.S. due to the small amount present, Unilever will eliminate entirely partially-hydrogenated oils by Q2 2010, and will then trumpet this fact with labels saying “0 grams of trans fat per serving.” In a related story, Cargill is the second manufacturer to announce it would halt production of hydrogenated oils at one of its plants.

• In a branding faux pas possibly akin to the New Coke, PepsiCo’s Gatorade’s share of the sports drink market fell 4.5% (to 75%) with volume down 17.5% in the first half of this year. Analysts blamed the re-branding of the product to “G” as contributing to consumers fleeing for other brands. PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi has all but thrown in the towel, saying she doesn’t see a return to double-digit growth in the U.S. despite sports drinks once being the "next" category.

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