Sainsbury’s rediscovers pleasure of food but what about the shopping experience?

Steve Smith, head of thought leadership at SMV Group, explains why supermarkets need to think about pleasure, not just price…

Late last year, Sainsbury’s launched its Live Well for Less campaign. Although it was more sophisticated than Tesco’s ‘Big Price Drop’, I had doubts about how effective this strategy would be.

One reason was its focus on price. Although price is important, a gap has been emerging between the activities and marketing of supermarkets, and some of the values of their customers, particularly around pleasure. Although price is important in hard pressed times, supermarket customers still want to enjoy themselves, even if it is just a more pleasurable shopping experience or an evening at home in front of the television.

A few months on, Sainsbury’s is rediscovering the importance of pleasure. Last week, the supermarket placed three full page ads in the Metro newspaper, each featuring an enjoyable experience: a quiet, slow Sunday breakfast of croissants, coffee and juice whilst reading the paper; an evening in watching the football with a pint and curry; and a long, luxurious soak in the bath.

However, eating and drinking is just one half of the picture. At the same time that Sainsbury’s placed these ads, The Daily Mail reported on a study commissioned by the Co-Operative supermarket, that has particular implications for how supermarkets can help mums.

The survey shows two thirds of women dislike struggling against crowds of other supermarket shoppers to get at what they want. A third can’t stand other shoppers’ children getting in their way, and one in 10 women admit to having had an altercation with another shopper, either because of trolley rage, quarrelling over the same item, or pushing in the queue.

When it comes to the checkout, four in 10 women feel rushed when the cashier scans items too quickly so they struggle to get everything into the right bags.

In contrast, three quarters of men quite enjoy the food shopping experience.

Helen Nunn, head of marketing, food, at The Co-operative explained: “We suspect one of the key reasons why women are more agitated in the supermarket is largely because they are rushing round trying to conduct the shopping as quickly as possible.

“Doing the food shop will be one item on a massive list of jobs, and something which simply has to be done at speed.”

Given that a third of regular female supermarket shoppers are mothers of children under 16, this pressure upon time and energy is unsurprising. Supermarkets clearly need to do more to facilitate the in-shop experience of mothers. These are some of the ways supermarkets can do this:

• More checkouts. Don’t just react to queues – use technology that counts shoppers coming through your doors and move staff onto and off checkouts accordingly
• Sell lottery tickets at checkouts, not at a separate counter. Mums don’t want to have to queue twice. This is also likely to lead to more lottery ticket sales
• Create incentives for shopping at less busy times, for example additional points or money off shopping
• Wider shopping aisles to make navigation easier
• Make deals simple and easy to understand
• Don’t move stock around unless you really have to. Mums have their shopping routines
• Option of having someone to help pack bags, collect forgotten shopping items and deliver to car.
• Crèche. Have times set aside during the week when mum’s can leave young children in a crèche, à la IKEA
• Provide staff specially trained to assist and advise young mums in purchase decisions
• Make snack packs available for young children at the start of a shop