The Millennial generation can be roughly defined as the group of individuals born between the years 1977 and 1994 (15 to 32 years of age). Called by several different names such as Generation Y, the Digital Generation, and Echo Boomers, this generation is one that is quickly establishing a strong identity as a consumer in today’s ever changing marketplace. This is the largest generation (80 million) with an estimated spending power of $625 billion.

This presentation will highlight the specific source of their meals and snacks; food shopping alternatives, frequency, and spending. What attributes are important in selecting a supermarket as well as the food shopping and eating psychology of this generation will be discussed. In addition, their use of social networks will be presented.

Attendees will be able to take home and put into effect immediately strategies and tactics to attract and maintain this group’s business. For example, suggestions on how to increase the supermarket’s share of Mature Millennials’ dinners will be introduced. Currently, over 30 percent of their dinners are sourced from food service. Likewise, recommendations on the use of social networks for recruiting and communicating store offerings will be presented to address the needs of this “wired” generation as well as to enhance the store image among the Mature Millennials. Also, suggestions will be offered on how to link the independent retailer to the lifestyles of this emerging generation.

In 1998, Food Distributors International (FDI) retained A.T. Kearney to develop a vision for the wholesale-supplied system through the middle of the first decade of the 21^st Century. The study (Strategies 2005: Vision for the Wholesale-Supplied System) concluded that “as we move toward 2005, the grocery industry will experience dramatic, fundamental changes in the way it does business.” As part of the original FDI study, independent food retailers were surveyed to get their perspectives on the changing grocery industry as well as their relationships with their primary food wholesalers.

Recently, research was undertaken to update the perspective of the independent food retailer. The overarching goal of the study was to understand the challenges confronting independent food retailers, specifically, as they affect relationships with their food wholesalers. In particular, the study collected the following information: profile of independent food retailers, wholesaler-retailer history, selected manufacturer-retailer history, independent food retailers’ views of the future, use of services provided by wholesalers, retailer satisfaction with such services, transportation issues, resource allocation, and overall satisfaction with their wholesalers.

This workshop will share the findings of the two studies, comparing and contrasting the perspectives existing then and now. Attendees will be able to review the results of this research as it relates to their own experiences. In addition, opportunities for enhanced independent food retailer effectiveness and efficiencies will be presented. This session is designed for maximum take-away and immediate application to today’s independent food retailing environment.

Customer service is in a crisis mode.  Consider the facts:

The American Customer Satisfaction Index stood at a barely passing grade (74) in its first year of measurement (1994).  Today it is still in the low 70’s.

• 60% of so-called “satisfied” customers regularly switch companies or brands.
• Last year, over one quarter of a billion Americans stopped doing business with companies with which they were “satisfied.”
• The average company has 11% of its revenue at risk as a result of customer problems and how they are handled.
• $1 spent on advertising yields less than $5 in incremental revenue, but that same $1 spent on improving customer service can yield more than $60 in incremental revenue.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to discover the evidence of customer service that’s missed its mark:

• Clueless clerks roam the aisles of your supermarket or department store.
• Customer service reps themselves often need “anger management.”
• Customer service people answer questions with “I don’t know” or “that’s the policy.”
• Customer complaints are often either ignored or treated with disdain.
• Customer service hotlines that are simply not answered or which place the caller into an automated menu “black hole.”

Clearly, the efforts to date to improve customer service have failed.  Previous rules and metaphors have done little to halt the flow of buyers wandering aimlessly in search of real relationships with sellers.

Everyone talks about customer service, but little is done to convert the rhetoric to reality. This presentation based on Dr. George’s most recent book on customer service, focuses on the concept of customer delight as a strategic marketing advantage. If you have suffered through countless books and presentations on customer service and are thoroughly confused, this practical presentation will identify 12 Steps to a Better Bottom Line.

This interactive presentation highlights 18 worksheets, which help you to discover what it takes to delight your customers.  These worksheets are designed for you to assess critically where your organization is relative to delighting customers.  Also, completing appropriate worksheets will enable you to put the concepts you’ve learned into action with customer delight the result of your efforts. (Book Available)

This presentation focuses on successful marketers and explores their strategies for success. This lively, interactive session identifies ten universal rules for strategic success with countless clues. Participants can forever shelve their “ad hoc” approach to strategy and can take home an approach that can be implemented the next day. In essence, this approach to marketing strategy is comparable to a chess game. The secret is to out-think your competitor. Participants are reminded that it is not “history that repeats itself,” instead it is the “failure to learn from history that repeats itself.”

Some of the rules include the following: Rule 2: Know What’s Under Your Umbrella, Rule 4: Know Your Playing Field, Rule 5: Know Who You Are Playing Against. These rules and others are invaluable if you want to avoid an “ad hoc” approach to developing a winning marketing strategy. In particular, Rule 3: Get and Stay Close to the Customer, is the basis for my extensive research, writings, and presentations on customer service.

This interactive presentation highlights a dozen worksheets, which are designed for audience members to critically assess where their organizations are relative to developing a winning marketing strategy. Also, completing appropriate worksheets will enable you to put the rules you’ve learned into action. The result: delighted customers and increased profits. (Book Available)

Traditionally, retailers consider brands as those items on the shelf or on the rack that consumers come in their store to purchase. While this is true, it misses the concept of a brand and the importance of branding. Retailers have a tremendous opportunity to develop a differentiated brand but only if they realize that they are a brand. In fact, everyone is branding, whether we realize it or not. Branding is the sum of the good, the ugly, the on and the off-strategy actions that we take. It is defined by a finely worded CEO pronouncement as well as by every aloof employee and derisory consumer comment.

Brands are sponges for content, images, and fleeting feelings. Everything a company does create impressions, good or bad. If the branding process is not strategically focused the results may be catastrophic, even if the intentions are well-founded.

You cannot entirely control your brand. At best you can only guide and influence it. But how do you do that? During this lively, interactive presentation, Dr. George introduces 10 key branding concepts designed to insure that your retail operation is engaged in “an intimate dance with your customers.” The topics covered will include the concept of branding to leveraging the power of the retailer’s brand in an ever changing market.

Attendees will learn how to insure that the retailer’s targeted audience clearly recognizes its identity (beyond products on the shelves) and that the target market is able to clearly distinguish it from competing retailers.

Typically, when asked about selecting a primary food retailer, customers tend to focus on non-customer service variables namely, cleanliness, quality, and price. However, whenever customers are asked “what improvements would you like to see in your primary grocery store?” the resounding reply is “better customer service.” However, the issue of what specifically constitutes better customer service has not been the focus of any known reported studies.

In essence, the three most mentioned factors (cleanliness, quality and price) are the “ante” to attract customers. Every food retailer, at a minimum, must offer these attributes. They are necessary, but not sufficient, to positively differentiate one food retailer versus another. However, the growth of food shopping alternatives in the form of super centers, club stores, chain drug stores, limited assortment and dollar stores, Internet, etc. have obviated the traditional food retailer’s cleanliness, quality, and price points of differentiation.

Results from a national research project will highlight the key customer service variables sought by consumers as well as an assessment on how well food retailers are performing on these variables. The study looks at all shoppers as well as perceptions by sex and age. Finally, the presentation will consider several strategic alternatives to adopt a customer service point of differentiation.

Shopping may be Americans’ favorite pastime, but many shoppers don’t even know the rules of the game. Companies and their customers are both frustrated by the shopping process. For example, what’s the most important thing to know before you buy something? How reliable are brand names if you’re looking for quality? How can you get results when you complain about an item? Your answers can indicate whether you’re a skilled survivor in the shopping world, or whether you need a guide to rescue you. Sometimes the most expensive item may be the best for you, and at other times, the cheapest may work.

The people who play smart and win at the game of shopping know what they want, prepare properly, and follow through until they’re satisfied. This lively presentation, filled with lots of examples, details a seven-step approach that starts with knowing what you want and ends with making sure you got it. (Book Available)

Everyone knows that consumers are changing. They seek greater convenience, quicker check-out, friendlier service, more ethnic products, and they make their food purchases in a variety of non-traditional food retail outlets. As the expression says, “We can’t change the wind, but we can adjust our sails.”

This interactive session will highlight several of these changes and will identify real opportunities for independent retailers to take advantage of these changes. Examples of simple, yet effective solutions to the needs of today’s consumers will be presented. In addition, session attendees will be invited to add their customized solutions to these consumer needs. In effect, the session will act as a targeted share group.

Attendees will leave with easy to implement solutions to the changing consumer that the big chains, supercenters, and alternative channels will be unable to execute in a timely fashion. The goal of this session is not to make the attendees better educated food retailers. The goal is to make them better food retailers.

Channels are not blurring; for consumers channel distinctions no longer exist. Today’s consumer purchases food whenever and wherever “hunger and convenience collide.” In this presentation a variety of food shopping alternatives will be introduced and discussed. Everyone knows about club stores, drug stores, and limited assortment stores and their efforts to attract the traditional supermarket shopper. However, what about the efforts of Home Depot; Bed, Bath & Beyond, Jack in the Box, Little Leprechaun Academy, and others who are offering groceries and meals as part of their differentiating strategy?

This seminar will identify these and other such threats to the traditional supermarket. Next, a variety of strategies and tactics to confront or to take advantage of these new players will be discussed. Seminar attendees will leave with a new sense of who are the real competitors, as well as some ideas as to how to deal with these “food interlopers.”

Independent food retailers have the opportunity to become the “community wellness champions.” Health and wellness will be key concerns of baby boomers, concerned mothers, and the Gen X & Y fitness fanatics. Baby boomers, a cohort group that worships youth, will present food retailers with a tremendous opportunity, as they attempt to fight the deleterious effects of aging. Obesity is a national epidemic affecting one-third of American men, women, and children. Concerned moms want to do their part in the fight against childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Food retailers need to seize this opportunity lest we cede it to chain drugstores. We are the food people. Drug chains are the pharmacy people. Wellness is ours to own and to provide a point of positive differentiation to food shoppers.

Examples of activities that would foster the perception that their independent retailer is the “community wellness champion” include offering free screenings, health fairs, dietary advice, wellness programs, educational programs, community walks, recreation programs, foundation support, and merchandising programs. How about offering time starved parents or guardians easy-to-prepare, tasty, nutritional foods that can be assembled for lunch? This session is designed to be interactive. The goal will be to identify easy to implement, cost-effective ways of addressing the consumer desire for wellness.