CNBC Supermarkets Special

[Spider]

Did anyone watch the CNBC Special on Supermarkets last night? Every evening, CNBC (after a day of live business news and stock market activity) shows in-depth programmes on business topics. (American Greed is one such favorite, Biographies another.) Last evening's showing about how supermarkets are run was very enlightening.

Amazing facts came to my attention - like, your average supermarket carries 45,000 different products - like Wal-Mart sells 25% of the food sold in the USA - like profit margins for the supermarket industry are around 1%.

What they know about their customers, what they do to entice customers to buy more, the extent to which they go to "stage" the produce - all makes our attempts at SEO for our websites seem quite antiquated.

Did you see the proramme? What did you thinkof it? Did you learn anything that could help your business, even though it's not a supermarket?

[Patrysha]

I didn't see the show myself, but I already knew about the razor's edge margin and the marketing research and programs. I worked in a small town grocery store a few years back...I read a lot of the owner's magazines when I had a chance...

[Dan Furman]

Yea, the food business in general is rough, because of spoilage. That drives down margins, and also creates a constant sense of urgency.

Many stores use similar principals. For example, I worked in a large, family-owned retail store. Motor oil (which we sold cheap) was really popular - the kind of item someone came in specifically to get. It was in the back of the store. You had to walk past everything to get it. Same with Supermarkets and Milk.

[Spider]

Yes, the staples at the back and impulse items by the cash register are given. I was impressed by the seat-of-the-pants "driving" of this "machine" given by the store manager - seems a strong pair of walking shoes and walkie-talkie are necessary pieces of equipment. The artistry and design that went into a fairly common array of baskets overflowing with apples, to portray abundance - seems they have found that people buy more when they feel there is plenty. (That was counter-intuitive for me - I thought scarcity was a driving force.)

I was also rather amazed that Whole Foods have their own (or exclusive contract with) Alaska fishermen, that they are strict about how the fish are caught (no nets, for example) and the care the fishermen are expected to take with each fish in the catch (so as not to damage the fins or lose any scales) and that fish caught are docked, cleaned, fileted, shipped and on the slab in the supermarket within 48 hours of swimming free in the ocean.

I wasn't aware that supermarket warehouses have a multitude of robot carts (no human driver) for picking out and picking up individual cartons, filling an order and carrying to dispatch for delivery to individual stores.

It is amazing.

[jamesray50]

I wouldn't mind watching that show if I knew when it was going to be show again.

[Harold Mansfield]

One of my favorite things about how supermarkets do things is how they put the sugary, themed cereals at eye level for kids and the nutritious whole grain stuff on the upper shelves where adults are likely to look first.
Little things like that are fascinating and help me as well in my job. Human behavior in a super market is not much different from human behavior on the web, especially the impulse buys..right down to how the isles are labeled and in what order...it's like a navigation bar on a website.

[jamesray50]

I never thought about designing my website like a grocery store. Don't think it work in my case. But interesting idea.

[Harold Mansfield]

No, I don't think that you should design it like a grocery store either. Just making notice of the similarities in navigation. Short, yet descriptive and to the point using the most important terms to signify a broad range of what will be found in that isle.