NewsLine Column: Cashing In On Convenience
With Sainsbury’s about to start promoting its banking service to shoppers, Denise Turner of Media Planning Group asks whether, in this age of convenience, consumers will buy into brands that offer a range of products across a number of different markets.
Last week one of the trade magazines carried a story about the new marketing strategy that Sainsbury’s Bank is set to introduce to up the ante on customer acquisition as part of a rebranding exercise. As part of a campaign that uses the line ‘Fresh Banking’ Sainsbury’s shoppers will be targeted by salespeople trying to convince them to purchase financial products as well as groceries, in a trial in 17 of the company’s stores. Apparently customers will be offered free gifts such as chocolates to incentivise them. Offers will be tailored to customers according to the demographic profiles of the stores in which they shop.
So what are the chances of success? On the one hand we are all very aware of the busy lives that consumers lead these days. Despite improvements in technology and the introduction of gadgets meant to make our lives easier, people seem to have less time to do most things in life. But that doesn’t stop them aspiring to easier lives and as a result one of the keywords of recent years has been convenience. According to BMRB’s TGI, 62% of consumers who do their regular major grocery shopping at Sainsbury’s believe ‘it is important to juggle various tasks at the same time’, indexing above the population.
All of which would suggest that Sainsbury’s shoppers would welcome an initiative that would make things simpler for them and save them time. Personal finance is something they take an interest in with 71% saying ‘I am more aware of personal finance than I used to be’ and 50% claiming to be ‘confident about personal finance’. Only 21% of them ‘leave finance in the home to someone else’. So perhaps the strategy will be a success and reap rewards for Sainsbury’s – after all only 29% of their customers believe that ‘retailers should not get involved in personal finance.’
On the other hand do people actually want to be thinking about financial services when they are trying to do the weekly household shop? Doesn’t the very fact that consumers have very busy lives these days mean that when they go shopping they want to do it quickly and get it out of the way? Sainsbury’s shoppers are very organised in their approach to shopping with 61% of them agreeing with the statement ‘I decide what I want before I do the weekly shopping’. This would suggest that as they plan they would be not too happy about being interrupted to discuss financial services. Only 10% of them claim to be ‘interested in financial services advertising’.
A couple of final thoughts: This move is meant to create greater synergy between Sainsbury’s grocery and banking brands but will it just end up diluting the former? And in this age of proliferating brands will consumers stick to the brands they know that deliver a service they are familiar with – eg Sainsbury’s for groceries, Barclays for banking and so on. Or will they believe that a brand that delivers for them in one market can also do the same in another?
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