Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Eating Alone

Eating Alone: The Food Marketer's Hidden Opportunity


woman eating alone Did you know that eating alone has become as normal as eating together? Eating alone is fast becoming the new normal. The Hartman Group’s analysis of how we eat as a culture shows that today a fairly astounding 46% of all adult eating occasions (up from 44% in 2010) are undertaken alone.
For a majority of consumers, what constitutes a "meal" today has transformed from traditional, sit-down "meat and potatoes with the family" into a constantly shifting assortment of snacking and eating alone occasions. We’re giving up meal occasions with others or combining eating with other tasks as the need for productivity compels us to move forward. In just the past few years, our ethnographers, working within households all across America, have witnessed the rapidly developing habit among consumers to eat alone even when dining with others—much of this brought about by mobile technology proliferation.
The rare event of the "Oh, I guess I have to eat by myself" solitary meal occasion (typically fulfilled by the likes of Swanson TV dinners or heating a can of Campbell's soup) is now a normative meal occasion. Many companies continue to market to traditional family occasions and are missing out on the emerging possibilities concealed within the eating alone occasion for a vast number of adults.

You may have heard us refer to the notion that our culture is evolving from a traditional, status-quo culture to one that is reimagined, consumer-driven and experiential. One stunning example of this is the manner in which many of us eat today, which nearly half the time is completely alone. In fact, in certain settings (such as the workplace), eating alone has become so pervasive that many of us don't realize we’re doing it anymore—underscoring what a ubiquitous behavior solitary eating is. The rise of eating alone has been fed by a number of trends:

  • Transitions within households post-World War II. The decades after WWII saw the movement of mothers into the work force, the rise of single-parent households and the rise of technology (e.g., television), all of which made inroads on traditional, social, sit-down "family meals."
  • A gradual loss of focus over the past fifty years on the importance of dining communally during specific meal occasions. Consider the now nearly-forgotten practice of workers and school children returning home midday for family lunches or the increasingly rare “family dinner.”
  • A continual movement away from a focus on taking time to consume foods. In modern culture, many meal occasions, especially those that are solitary, are now characterized by the mechanics of eating and not the celebration of food occasions. A common example is the now-pervasive practice of Americans eating alone at their desks while they work.
  • The snackification of meals. America is now a snacking culture where eating any time of day is a personal right, and satiety is often the goal. Consumers increasingly believe that eating smaller meals more frequently is healthier and that snacking bridges gaps between meals due to long work and commute times.

Dismantling Social Dining
One of the most interesting aspects of the trend toward eating alone is the notion that it represents the dismantling of the communal meal and the way we "used to eat": historically, eating was something social, and often implied something done with others where stories were told and events of the day might be shared. While less acknowledged, eating socially also serves several purposes with nutritional and dietary benefits, including:
  • Regulation of portions: People eating together will often point out if someone is "taking too much" or as a group will discuss how to "fairly" divide a meal into what are believed to be adequate portions
  • Shifting the focus: From the nutritional, mechanical aspects of the meal toward conversation and even celebration of the occasion
The Ins and Outs of Eating Alone While there are positive aspects to eating alone, which we'll describe later in this discussion, of great interest is our finding that consumers eating alone tend to veer far away from some of the positive effects of social dining just described. In particular, we see them:
  • Self-creating standards for what constitutes a portion: within the vacuum of eating alone, consumers left to their own devices are often unaware that they might be consuming much more than a single portion.
  • Reducing solitary meals to a kind of "ism" where elemental meal parts and ingredients become the fixation of the individual to the point that the nutritional parts become “everything”: here, narrow dietary preoccupations (e.g., veganism, paleoism, glutanism, etc.) processed introspectively become larger than life, especially when compared with the dynamics (and often welcome distractions) of social eating.
And yet, while eating alone is often described as a lonely prospect, riddled with pitfalls related to poor dietary judgment and introspective nutritional fixations, we see that the growing trend of eating alone is also influencing some profoundly positive and different ways of looking at such an occasion. Consider the following:
  • With eating alone becoming the norm, consumers are seeking ways in which to celebrate it. So, the roast beef dinner has evolved into what is often a search for customizable components that can be crafted to form a meal for one. Food to go, portable foods and premium “snacks” all can be crafted together to form a meal for one. For many consumers, solitary dining is a new way of eating that can be customized and personalized.
  • Packaging, such as used in Trader Joe’s salad kits or Sabra Hummus singles, can shift solitary dining from a lonely occasion to something fun by serving as an interactive and pleasurable distraction.
  • In food retail, deli food stations such as olive bars enable consumers to have higher-quality, global food experiences on everyday occasions by providing a combination of premium, small tastes. As they eat alone, consumers increasingly aggregate snack items to become a meal—thereby underscoring just how much eating styles have changed.
Food for Thought Rules no longer really apply for eating occasions, especially when it comes to eating alone. Many companies continue to market to family occasions and iconic meals of the past, missing the opportunity to market to the vast number of adults who are increasingly eating alone. Consider:
  • Over half of adult alone eating occasions take place in the home, and marketers need not cede the sourcing for alone occasions to QSR or other foodservice channels. Within food retail, significant opportunities exist to develop single-portion-oriented baked, prepared and refrigerated stations that enable those shoppers assembling meals-for-one to mix and match new tastes and cuisines. Prepared foods sections (such as those found in Whole Foods and Wegmans) can be masterfully constructed for this behavior. A caution: we continually see portion sizes creeping upward (e.g., sushi for four) in prepackaged refrigerated meals and snacks, while for solitary diners just a sleeve of sushi (i.e., a portion for one) will suffice.
  • Connect with consumers on these solitary occasions—both with marketing and product innovation. CPG food manufacturers can connect with consumers relevantly by creating new forms of packaging and ingredients that encourage interactivity and a sense of personalization. Trader Joe’s is often praised by consumers for its two-person meal solutions.
  • For food retailers, remember that consumers are cooking for themselves on alone occasions! Provide them with the meal components they need to enjoy this occasion.

Monday, October 29, 2012

A look at the Candy Industry

Unreal on Quest to Conquer Candy Land

Natural Brand Takes on Mars and Hershey With Big Backing, Top Marketing Talent and Major Retail Accounts

image catpion here
If you were among the skateboarders and rollerbladers whizzing along California's Venice Beach promenade last Thursday, you may have stumbled onto a shoot for one of the more ambitious product launches in history.
As passersby gawked, actors pushed red shopping carts brimming with brightly colored packages of candy. These weren't just any chocolate bars, though. The ad will promote a new, all-natural candy brand called "Unreal" that is breaking into the confection space in a big way.
And just in time for Halloween, when $2.3 billion in candy is sold. That translates into about 600 million pounds, the majority of it going into the sticky maws of 10 million kids between the ages of 4 and 14.
Among that bunch only two years ago was teenager Nicky Bronner, the literal brainchild behind Unreal, which is on "a candy-coated mission to unjunk the world," as the company's mission statement reads.
Unreal's proposition is that its candy is all-natural and sustainably sourced. That means no corn syrup or genetically modified organisms. It uses colors not from dyes but from plants like cabbage and beets, and palm kernel oil from an organic farm in Brazil. Traceable cacao beans come from farms in Ghana and Ecuador that don't employ child slave labor.
It took thousands of recipe attempts to concoct Unreal's five launch candies that in look and taste mimic some of the best-known candy brands, including M&M's, Milky Way and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They're meant to cost the same, too, at suggested retail prices of $.89 to $1.29 for individual packages.
Taking on established megabrands like Hershey and Mars is a hurdle of the highest proportions. But a David vs. Goliath scenario? Not exactly.
One key differentiator between this firm and other startups is its well-connected CEO who wields years of marketing experience. Nicky's dad -- and Unreal's chief -- is Michael Bronner, founder of Digitas. He set up that agency in 1980 and served as chairman emeritus until 2006, the year he sold it to Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion. From there he went on to found UPromise, which was sold to Sallie Mae for $300 million. To round out the team at Unreal, Mr. Bronner recruited Carlos Canals, who has served as president-CEO at Tribe Mediterranean Foods and earlier held that same position at the Kashi division of Kellogg. Others on the team include a former Googler, a former P&Ger and innovative chef Adam Melonas.
Unreal's proposition has sparked the interest of venture capitalists, who are kicking in. And it's won another key battle: distribution.
CVS earlier this year became the first major retailer to carry Unreal. It was followed by Rite Aid, Walgreens, Wegmans, Kroger, BJ's Warehouse, Michaels, Staples and, in a major coup, Target. In fact, the Venice TV shoot last week, orchestrated by Backyard Productions, was for a Target ad.
Mr. Bronner has also approached famous friends such as supermodel Gisele Bundchen; her football-star husband, Tom Brady; and Twitter's Jack Dorsey to endorse the product via YouTube videos and on their social networks.
On the agency side, Unreal has retained Big Spaceship for a digital onslaught to help push its candies as an alternative to those from Mars and Hershey. Those companies either declined to comment or could not be reached last week, while reps for Mr. Bronner said he was too busy to talk ahead of the Halloween push.
Now, Unreal is focused on its biggest challenge: getting consumers to buy Unreal instead of the brands they've known their whole lives.
Mars, Hershey, Kraft and Nestlé (in that order) control more than 65% of the candy market in the U.S., per EuroMonitor data. Can Unreal bite off a piece of the $30 billion candy industry?
New England Consulting Group CEO Gary Stibel, who has worked with Hershey, said he thinks so. "Look at a brand like Annie's," the maker of organic pastas, snacks and condiments, Mr. Stibel said. "If executed well, there's a lot of potential. People are looking for brands that have a purpose and mean something. Is there a value proposition with Unreal? Absolutely."
Added candy consultant Randy Hofberger, "Will [Unreal] get a little part of the market? Yes. Will they get enough that it will drop Mars' sales by 10%? No."

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Measuring Marketability of Sports Figures

Appeal is relative, and Danica Patrick still has it

Oct 26, 2012 6:24 PM ET | By Brant James
Danica PatrickGeoff Burke/Getty Images/NASCARDanica Patrick has been able to maintain a balance of appeal between male and female consumers.
Danica Patrick has not lost her fastball, said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of The Q Scores Company. In marketing, as in baseball, he said, everything is relative. And although the company's oft-cited measure of celebrity power was last week brandished in a USA Today article to suggest the possible impending demise of an endorser, Schafer said Patrick remains one of the most known and liked figures in sports.
"Maybe a little speed off it,'' he told espnW.com, "and she's throwing more changeups. We've seen a little softening in overall perception, but she's still pretty strong."
[+] EnlargeDanica PatrickJamie Squire/Getty ImagesOne theory for Danica Patrick's slip in Q Scores is her inability to win races the past few years, which could be a cause for concern heading into her first full Sprint Cup season in 2013.
Q Scores measure awareness and likability in sports figures, assigning an overall value and providing a gauge for marketers seeking celebrity endorsers. Patrick's score has slipped from its peak of 29 in 2010 to 19 this year, meaning, Schafer said, that 19 percent of sports fans familiar with her consider her one of their favorite personalities.
"She's maintaining her awareness out there," Schafer said. "I mean, she was really high a couple years ago, so despite some erosion in her appeal, she's still above average. The unique thing about her, as a spokesperson particularly in the sports world, is she was and still is able to maintain a good balance of appeal between male and female consumers, which I believe is an important ingredient to her profile for representing GoDaddy. So that part of it would be hard to replace, to find another female sports spokesperson -- if that's what they want to do -- with that kind of balanced appeal."
GoDaddy chief marketing officer Barb Rechterman told espnW.com last week, "We plan to continue with Danica for years to come." The Internet domain provider has sponsored Patrick's race cars on a partial or full-time basis since the 2007 IndyCar season with Andretti Autosport and has committed to what both it and Stewart-Haas Racing characterize as a "multiyear" deal as she begins her first full Sprint Cup season in 2013.
As one of the diminishing number of full-season sponsors in Sprint Cup, GoDaddy has aligned itself with a driver who remains very popular in comparison to her competitors, Schafer said. Patrick has ranked "among the top five most appealing race car personalities," he said, since 2008.
Marketing, like racing, is a perpetual contest against every peer, and Patrick still excels in the off-track competition, according to Q Scores.
"[She's] right up there with Dale Earnhardt [Jr.], Jeff Gordon, in terms of awareness and in terms of likability, she's pretty much where they are at this point," Schafer said.
Earnhardt Jr., the Sprint Cup series' perennially most popular driver, has a 22 Q Score, down from 28 in 2011, and Gordon's is 21, negligibly down from 22 in 2011.
The average NASCAR driver Q Score is currently a 13. Schafer said upward and downward trend lines for various drivers provided no systemic reason for Patrick's decline but feels her lag could be remedied with on-track performance.
"A lot of her erosion is probably due to a lack of winning races over the past couple years, getting that kind of notoriety as well," Schafer said. "So it's all part of the perception out there. Basically, she has been on the straight and narrow, so there's nothing from a negative point or incident that would contribute to that perception. Apparently, it's just some natural erosion, not winning some races she's been in."
That theory is perhaps foreboding for Patrick -- she has finished no better than eighth in Nationwide this season and will begin her full-time Cup career with only 10 starts of experience – but it shouldn't be surprising. She has said since the beginning of her IndyCar career, through the shockwave of attention she generated in 2005 by finishing fourth and becoming the first woman to lead laps in the Indianapolis 500, that on-track performance would determine the attention span of the casual fan and marketing community. Addressing that concern may now be more pressing, unless a highly publicized first season in NASCAR's big leagues -- the first ever for a woman -- stokes her mainstream image sufficiently.
Mark Dyer, Patrick's agent with the IMG Worldwide management group, said he was confident in Patrick's status as an endorser even before Q Scores were taken into context. Dyer told espnW.com earlier this year that Patrick's portfolio of sponsors was all but filled out.
[+] EnlargeDanica PatrickJerry Markland/Getty Images for NASCARDanica Patrick's popularity is evident at racetracks where men, women and children show their support.
"There are a number of measures of celebrity awareness, what the public associates as attributes of these celebrities' brand," he said. "Danica scores very, very highly in a cross section of these types of ratings. If you use different methodologies, ask different questions, measure different things, she scores very, very high, not just in NASCAR or racing, but as a national celebrity and as an admired person and a trailblazer as a female competing in a predominantly male sport."
Patrick's awareness score of 76 dwarfed the group average of 40 among female athletes assessed by the company this year, and her overall score of 19 tied Venus Williams and edged Serena Williams by a point. The Williamses were the only female athletes to better Patrick's awareness score, at 87 and 85, respectively.
Patrick posted a Q Score of 26 in 2008 -- the year of her lone IndyCar win -- and peaked at 29 two years ago in conjunction with the commencement of her first part-time Nationwide Series season.
She is completing her first full-time season in the second-tier series. Her popularity is ever-present at racetracks in the amount of shocking green logo apparel worn by children, women and men of all ages, and NASCAR officials said Patrick is trending well in the on-going annual vote for the most popular driver in the Nationwide Series. She won the same title in each of her seven IndyCar seasons except last year, when it was claimed by the late Dan Wheldon.
So while there might be pause in regards to her Q Scores, Schafer said, panic is currently unjustified.
"She's still pretty appealing even though she's lower than what she was years ago," he said. "She's right there with all the top names."

Friday, October 26, 2012

Red Bull

Red Bull Stratos Shatters Records—And Traditional Notions Of Marketing

"I know the whole world is watching now," said Felix Baumgartner, at the edge of space. They were--Red Bull Stratos set viewing records and marked another giant leap for a brand that’s setting the standard for content marketing.
For most brands, a risky marketing move consists of not testing the copy on that new ad, or using a new media channel despite the lack of rock solid metrics.
Red Bull’s idea of risk is that one of its sponsored athlete’s bodily fluids will turn into gas as he plummets 24 miles from space at 800+ miles per hour while his parents, girlfriend, and the rest of the world watch, live.
With the Red Bull Stratos Project, the energy drink brand-turned-media company brought extreme sports spectacle to new heights and redefined the idea of content marketing, PR stunt, and brand utility.
Of course, the real risk was taken by Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian skydiver, BASE jumper, and all-round daredevil who, on Sunday, while millions watched, stepped from a balloon-borne capsule into a 128,000-foot freefall to earth. Baumgartner started working in 2005 with Red Bull, which would back the Stratos project as sponsor. The idea was to send Baumgartner to the edge of space in a stratospheric balloon, have him execute a free-fall jump, hit supersonic speeds, and then parachute safely to the ground. The purpose: to break a record set by former U.S. Air Force pilot Joe Kittinger, who made a 19-mile jump in 1960, to record reams of data from the leap that could be used by the aerospace, commercial flight, and medical industries, and, for Red Bull, to set a new standard in extreme sports cred.
Live video captured the jump on Sunday October 14, after last week’s planned launch was cancelled due to high winds. Viewers watching on YouTube or the Discovery Channel or following along on the many sites that covered the event saw Baumgartner ascend into the stratosphere, stand on his capsule’s tiny platform and then, simply, step into the void. The jump, which, initially, looked perfect, turned at one point into the kind of out of control flat spin that could have knocked Baumgartner unconscious. There was also some concern about his space suit’s visor fogging up, a glitch that could have scuttled the mission. But Baumgartner managed to correct the spin, deal with the gear issues and after the fall, parachute lightly onto the earth in the eastern New Mexico desert.
In a press conference after the event, Baumgartner and his team, including Kittinger, technical project director Art Thompson, life support engineer Mike Todd, and medical director Jonathan Clark, confirmed that the successful jump had broken three records: highest jump, with an exit altitude of 128,100 feet; longest free fall at 4 minutes and 20 seconds, and maximum highest vertical velocity: Baumgartner fell 119, 846 feet or 36,529 meters reaching a maximum velocity of 373 meters per second or 833.9 miles an hour. Put another way, Mach 1.24--faster than the speed of sound.
The record-breaking jump represented the work of a number of entities and experts who collaborated on the creation of the pressure suit (designed by the David Clark Company), capsule, and the 55-story, 3,000-pound balloon that lifted the capsule, parachutes, cameras, and communications gear, data collection, and other elements.
While Baumgartner and his team celebrated the milestones achieved through years of technical work on all of those moving parts, Red Bull could celebrate another record--more than 8 million people watched the YouTube Live stream of the event, besting President Obama’s inauguration, and any other mainstream spectacle. Meanwhile, the event drew untold millions in earned media. According to Red Bull, footage from the event will also be used in a BBC documentary that will air in November and on National Geographic Channel in the U.S.
Red Bull has a long history of producing high-end events and content beloved by exactly the kinds of people that you’d think would love Red Bull content, and Red Bull itself--snowboarders, skateboarders, adventure sports types, gamers, and the bros who emulate them. But more recently, the company has also enjoyed more mainstream success. Its Art Of Flight feature film, which captured the antics of the world’s top snowboarders on the world’s least-ridden mountains, was the top-selling movie on iTunes the week of its release. And while the number of people who might consider themselves hardcore space jumping fans is probably fairly small, the sheer scale, audacity and…weirdness of Stratos pulled in millions of fans of aviation, mainstream sports, science and…weirdness.
During the event, Red Bull Stratos was trending (under a few different headings) on Twitter, as everyone from athletes to magazines like GQ and social media pundits to the Gates Foundation to hoi polloi tweeted about the event in admiring tones. When do you ever see that swath of humanity tweeting in gee whiz admiration about a branded event? Not often.
There’s a lot that’s astonishing about the project, but one of the more quietly amazing things is that this is a privately funded quasi-space mission--NASA (the U.S. government) is going to be reaping data from a major aerospace project funded and orchestrated by a brand. (As one wag tweeted after the event: "That awkward moment when you realize an energy drink has a better space program than your nation"). This is the new world of marketing--where the advertising efforts of brands become public works--think Nike funding childhood obesity studies and creating campaigns to get kids moving and American Express creating an initiative to get the public shopping at small businesses.
And, more simply, it’s an insanely ambitious standard for content marketing. As noted here before, Red Bull has gone further than almost any other brand in demolishing the line between the company’s “primary” business--making energy drinks--and the corollary business of creating content and experiences for the people that it considers its target audience for those drinks.
To say that Red Bull creates content at this point to sell energy drinks, while technically true, has become almost misleading as a way to encapsulate the company’s mission and its marketing philosophy. For Red Bull, “content” has meant inventing a new snowboarding competition and related video content, making a feature film, creating a championship Formula 1 team--and now, putting a man at the edge of space for an unprecedented leap and an unprecedented PR spectacle--and, more and more, the content is the business.
Since the company was founded in 1987, it’s built its content creation discipline just as rigorously as it’s built its beverage distribution channels, or any product-related mechanism. It’s become a media company. When Co.Create asked company founder Dietrich Mateschitz earlier this year whether Red Bull was a drinks-maker or a content producer, i.e., whether the athletes and sports ventures supported the selling of beverages or the other way around, the answer was, in essence. “yes.” “This is not either or,” said Mateschitz. “It is both ways, the brand is supporting the sports and culture community, as well as the other way round.”
So what’s it like to free fall from space? Below, Baumgartner’s report, delivered at the post-leap press conference, of what he was thinking, saying, and feeling during the event.
Standing on the platform of the capsule, looking down at earth and ready to jump:
"When i was standing there on top of the world you become so humble--the only thing you want is to come back alive. You don’t want to die in front of your parents, your girlfriend and all those people.”
What he said at that moment:
"I know the whole world is watching now and i wish the world could see what I see…Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are.”
What he felt like getting ready to jump:
"When you’re up there you’re already exhausted--I never anticipated it would be so tough."
The feeling of traveling really fast--and then going into that horrible spin:
"It started out good--my exit was perfect,” he said. After a planned tumble, he began, for reasons he didn’t know at the time, spinning out of control. "For some reason the spin became violent. When you’re in that pressure suit--pressurized at 3.5 psi--you don’t feel the air. It’s like swimming without touching the water.” Trying to correct the spin at first just make it worse, but Baumgartner eventually managed to right himself.
Asked if he felt he was in trouble during the descent, Baumgarnter says yes, but he was thinking through the choice of pulling an emergency chute or going for the speed record. "I have a manual button, where I can release a drogue shoot to pull me out of the spin. But then it’s all over; I’m not going to fly supersonic." The choice was: "push that button and stay alive or get it under control.”
The feeling of going supersonic:
"It’s hard to describe because I can’t feel it… if you want to judge speed you need reference points; I had none of those." (because of the suit).

Stores Focus Online Spending On Email, Mobile

Stores Focus Online Spending On Email, Mobile

  Ornament

Forget about sharpening their online strategies in the weeks ahead: Retailers kicked off digital spending months ago. And mobile, social and email budgets are bigger than ever, according to a new study from Retail Systems Research and Bronto Software.
“Last year, we noticed online marketing taking off for retailers in mid-September,” Jim Davidson, Bronto’s manager of market research, tells Marketing Daily. “This year, we were seeing holiday emails going out in August, right down to stockings hanging by the fireplace.” Still, a third of the respondents don’t intend to start digital promotions until Black Friday.
The survey, which probed 179 large retailers about their holiday marketing plans, finds that close to half are increasing their online budgets, and more than 20% say they will allocate more than 50% of that budget to either mobile, social or email marketing channels. 
Stores see themselves in a test-and-learn period with digital spending, “and from a broad perspective, they want to learn how to not lose their sales this year,” he says. “The consumer is so distracted by so many channels and devices. There is a lot for consumers to understand and digest. So we’re seeing marketers ask themselves, 'Regardless of channel, how can I help my customer buy with confidence?’”
Stores are bullish on the holidays ahead, with 68% expecting sales to increase, and a quarter saying they expect results to rise more than 50% from last year’s spending levels. And 43% intend to either significantly (21%) or slightly (22%) raise their holiday online marketing budgets.
Some 87% will use email. To make those programs more effective, the study finds that 46% have invested more in subscriber acquisition, 43% in automated messaging, and 36% in personalization. “Marketers are finding smarter ways to message customers,” he says. “It’s not just in an increase in frequency.”
Additionally, 49% have invested in mobile apps, 46% in a new e-commerce platform, and 43% in mobile website optimization.
Davidson also says stores are paying closer attention to saving sales in abandoned carts, with 35% planning to offer those shoppers a percent- or dollar-off promotion.

JC Penney's Million Women Walkout

JC Penney's Million Women Walkout

While shying away from using the word coupon, JC Penney’s recent delivery of a $10 “gift” to its email newsletter recipients demonstrated that the beleaguered department store was finally bending to what its customers have been asking for all along: a deal. Since the commencement of its “Fair & Square” promotional strategy in Q1 of 2012, JC Penney has been fighting a losing battle with its dwindling customer base, trying to spoon feed shoppers everyday low pricing like its ice cream, while in reality they were tasting [insert your least favorite veggie here]. What did JC Penney forget? In this economy, consumers have the upper hand with retailers.
With sales set in a tailspin during the first half of the year, it’s obvious that “Fair & Square” was a costly turnabout for both JC Penney and its customers.  But what price did JC Penney pay in terms of lost shoppers?
According to the Consumer Equity Index™ for the highly competitive women’s clothing segment, JC Penney’s share of female customers shrank 13% in the past year, leaving the department store with an index of 86.9 (baseline index = 100).* That equates to a loss of 1.3 million of the department store’s most loyal female women’s clothing shoppers.
With their million woman march out of JC Penney, these shoppers appear to have gravitated to Kohl’s (index = 104.5), Macy’s (116.1), Target (121.6), and even Walmart (112.2) for their women’s apparel purchases. Female shopper share for each of these competitors has increased over the past 13 months:

A million shoppers are a lot to lose in a year’s time – especially in just one category – but the numbers become even more sobering when you consider how much potential revenue JC Penney let slip from its grasp. With the average female spending more than $500 per year within the women’s clothing segment, an estimated $745 million in potential revenue has walked out of JC Penney’s women’s department over the past year – that’s a big share of purse, if you will.
JC Penney’s $10 gift comes at a pivotal time for retailing: the all-important holiday season. And with shoppers continuing to be drawn to sales, coupons, and promotions like moths to a flame, JC Penney is likely to see a short-term increase in the foot traffic it so desperately needs. However, while the department store indicates that this “gift” does not signal their return to couponing, if they want repeat customers, they may have to keep the coupons gifts coming.
* The Consumer Equity Index™ from BIGinsight™ is a year over year index showing growth or decline of consumer preference share. An index of 100 is flat, an index of 105 indicates 5% growth, while an index of 95 denotes 5% decline.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Irish Soul


 New Product Promotion

Pepsi celebrates partnership with 'The X Factor' with limited-edition soda

Related Content


PURCHASE, N.Y. — Pepsi is commemorating its partnership with "The X Factor" with the launch of new Pepsi X.
This past spring, Pepsi joined "The X Factor" and embarked on "The Pepsi Flavor Audition Tour," giving contestants and fans at more than 20 locations in 15 cities, the exclusive opportunity to sample four new Pepsi flavors and be the judge of which one earned the right to be called Pepsi X. With more than 15,000 contestant and fan votes captured, one limited-edition Pepsi flavor will be crowned as Pepsi X, on Oct. 4. New Pepsi X will be available beginning Oct. 8, in 12-packs, 2-liter and 20-oz. bottles, while supplies last.
"Our partnership with 'The X Factor' has given us the opportunity to further engage with our passionate consumers, and continue the Pepsi legacy of supporting aspiring musical talent," said Eric Whitehouse, director of marketing for Pepsi. "With Pepsi X, we put fans in the judge's seat — giving them the power to select our next limited-edition flavor — the Pepsi with 'The X Factor.'"


 A unique promotion

Digital Deal Spans Shopping Trips, Retailers
Oct. 4, 2012 4:43pm
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. — Unilever has launched a unique digital promotion that extends savings to shoppers across multiple shopping trips and retailers.
The “One or Many” promotion, powered by paperless grocery service SavingStar, gives shoppers $5 back after they spend $20 in total on any Unilever products through Thanksgiving day.
Shoppers can access the deal on Facebook via Unilever’s “Making Life Better" page or directly on www.savingstar.com. To redeem the offer, users must register their supermarket loyalty card with SavingStar. It then links the deal to all registered cards.

At the store, shoppers swipe their loyalty card when they buy Unilever products. When the $20 goal is reached, SavingStar enables shoppers to cash out their $5 savings with a direct deposit to any bank or PayPal account, as an Amazon gift card or as a donation to American Forests to help plant trees.
“What distinguishes this promotion is the incredible range of products — more than 10,000 units of products consumers know, love and trust — the combination of savings over multiple trips and retailers and the ability to connect to retail loyalty cards,” said Christine Cea, senior director, marketing communications for Unilever, in a statement.


Wegmans to break ground on new supermarket in Burlington

Date: Thursday, October 4, 2012, 9:21am EDT
Wegmans to break ground soon at Northwest Park in Burlington.
Courtesy image.








Wegmans, the Rochester, N.Y.-based grocery chain that has a cult-like following, will break ground Oct. 16 on its third Massachusetts store at Northwest Park in Burlington, Mass.
The new store, to be built on Third Avenue by the Nordblom Co., would measure 135,000 square feet. It will feature a traditional supermarket with one-third of the store devoted to prepared foods, with another 15,000 square feet for a liquor department and a 300-seat cafe. Typically, Wegmans’ stores offer 70,000 products, including 300 cheeses, 700 varieties of fruits and vegetables and 2,500 varieties of wine.
Wegmans has signed a 30 year lease with options to renew with parking for 800 vehicles. Customers will be able to enter and exit Wegman’s from Third Avenue, Fourth Avenue or from Network Drive via Second Avenue.
One year ago, Wegmans opened its first Bay State store in Northborough as the curious came by the thousands and joined transplanted devotees who have long awaited the store's arrival in New England. Wegmans Food Markets is an 80-store chain with markets in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland and Massachusetts. It has been named one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune magazine for 15- consecutive years.
Wegmans has a smaller supermarket under construction at the Chestnut Hill Square development on Route 9 across from The Mall at Chestnut Hill in Newton. The chain will be unveiling a new, smaller urban concept at this location, where it will build a 70,000-square-foot store.

This article reviews the successful implementation of 4 square in Starbucks

Square, Starbucks roll out service

Square unfurled its deal with Starbucks that will put Square's small mobile-payment devices in 7,000 of the coffee makers' USA storefronts.

9:31PM EST October 4. 2012 - SAN FRANCISCO -- Square's grand business plan just got a caffeinated jolt.
In one of the largest mobile-payments rollouts yet, technology start-up Square on Thursday said it has begun processing all credit card transactions at Starbucks' more than 7,000 U.S. storefronts. Next month, customers will be able to purchase coffee with Square's Wallet app, the companies say.
Starbucks also said it will enable digital tipping on its mobile-payment apps and on Square Wallet in the U.S. in summer 2013.
"We think we can redefine a Starbucks customers' experience," Square CEO Jack Dorsey told USA TODAY.
Dorsey, who invented Twitter, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz presented the plan at Starbucks' Leadership Conference in Houston, where more than 10,000 Starbucks store managers were in attendance.
With Starbucks, Square -- whose app is increasingly popular among small businesses -- for the first time is wading into mobile payments for large multinational organizations. It plans to venture overseas next year through Starbucks, which has 18,000 stores in 60 countries.
Eventually, Starbucks' customers will be able to order and pay for drinks via their smartphone before they enter a store, says Adam Brotman, chief digital officer at Starbucks. Starbucks employees, in turn, would be able to process orders before a customer speaks, based on the information contained on their Square apps, he says.
"There are seismic changes to (consumer) behavior because of technology," Schultz told store managers in Houston. Starbucks chose Square instead of about a dozen other tech suitors because "Jack cracked the code on customer experience," Schultz said.
For Starbucks, which already had a successful mobile-payments system, the partnership with Square expands its formidable reach. Starbucks is the largest retailer accepting mobile payments -- it handles more than 1 million mobile transactions a week. The deal with Square lets credit card users who don't have a Starbucks card make mobile payments at the coffee chain. (Frequent-buyer rewards that come with Starbucks cards are not transferable to the Square app.)
The Starbucks deal introduces Square to more consumers and helps the overall digital market, Denee Carrington, an analyst at Forrester Research, said in a recent report.
While Starbucks has no immediate plans to displace cash registers with card scanners, as Nordstrom and others do, its deal with Square does augur a continued shift away from cash.
Payments on a 'massive scale'
Square's success has spawned competing services -- PayPal Here, NCR, Intuit and Groupon, to mention a few -- that have crowded the market, and given consumers one less reason to use cash.
Handicapping the mobile-payments race, each major player has carved out a niche, according to analysts. Square is ideal for small merchants such as coffee shops and food trucks. PayPal Here is positioned for businesses that have an online and offline presence. Groupon's new service will appeal to businesses such as restaurants and spas with which it already works. Intuit's GoPayment is designed for small and midsize businesses.
Square is generally in "good shape," Aite Group analyst Rick Oglesby says, because it has a head start on the competition -- and the Starbucks deal is "huge" by putting them in front of a mainstream audience.
"No one else has really achieved that yet, so I'd say that Square is probably off to the best start -- but it's going to be a very long and competitive race with more than one winner," Oglesby says.
Despite the Starbucks deal, Square faces formidable competitors and major hurdles to becoming a force with big retailers and corporations. "While Square is new, it's just facilitating a 50-year-old payment mechanism — mag-stripe cards," says Nick Holland, an analyst at market researcher Yankee Group.
Mobile-payment transactions will surpass $171.5 billion, up 62% from $105.9 billion in 2011, says market researcher Gartner. The ranks of mobile payment users worldwide, meanwhile, is expected to vault 32%, to 212.2 million in 2012, from 160.5 million in 2011.
Rocky Agrawal, an analyst at reDesign Mobile, offers a cautionary note about the massive scale of payments, and how Square sizes up. While Square claims to process $8 billion in transactions annually, he says, American Express processed $822 billion.
Squaring up
Since its device and app launched in 2010 as a pioneer in mobile point-of-sale systems, Square has gained more than 2 million customers, who typically pick up the small, white plastic device for free through the company's website, or with a rebate from retail stores such as Apple, Best Buy and Walmart.
Smaller businesses, such as coffee shops and food trucks, use Square's device, which plugs into the headphone jacks of mobile phones and tablets to perform transactions and keep customer records.
The 400-person private company has grown quickly by raising capital from the likes of Visa and venture-capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. Former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and Schultz are among its board members.
Last month, Square said it raised $200 million in its latest round of funding from investors that include Starbucks, Citi Ventures and Rizvi Traverse Management. That now values Square at $3.3 billion.
Square's device plugs into Apple and Android mobile devices to enable smaller merchants who previously were only able to take payments made by cash or check, to accept credit cards by swiping them through the dongle.
Square has widened its ambitions. It offers a merchant-finder for people to identify which businesses take Square payments; merchants can use it as a way to manage inventory; and there are now options to pay with Square that do not involve you actually pulling out your card.
The Starbucks deal not only broadens Square's audience and visibility, but it "validates" the company's mission, Dorsey said in the interview. As a testament to Starbucks' influence among retailers and as an early technology adopter, Square has heard from several major retailers that now want to work with Square. He hinted that more deals may be announced but gave no specifics.
The pitched battle for mobile payments intensified in August, when Square announced a new pricing model that gives merchants the option to pay a monthly fee of $275 instead of the current 2.75% fee on every transaction.
Merchants who make more than $10,000 per month in business would pay less under the new pricing plan. It's all part of a move to make it easier for consumers and merchants to eschew cash, Dorsey says.