If you’re going shopping this weekend, and paying with a credit card – watch out. Beginning Sunday, stores can charge you extra for it. Under the terms of a settlement reached last year, stores will have the option of adding a surcharge for credit card payments – passing the cost that they already pay to the credit card companies, on[Read More…]
A grocery store can have all the modern bells and whistles – loyalty programs, digital coupons, online ordering. But what’s really important to you? A recent study says if supermarkets don’t get two key things right, customers are likely to leave and never come back. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ report “Experience Radar 2013: Lessons from the U.S. Grocery Industry”, price is[Read More…]
If everyone’s prices are low, are anyone’s prices really low? While you ponder that, consider this recent prediction from the retail consultant AMG Strategic Advisors: within three years, the vast majority of retailers will largely ditch sales and promotions in favor of everyday low pricing. Super-savers accustomed to collecting coupons and waiting for sales may shudder at the thought; Walmart[Read More…]
If you need to do some last-minute grocery shopping today, join the crowds. Christmas Eve Day just might be the busiest day of the year at your local supermarket. Unless it was yesterday. Or Saturday, or maybe the day before Thanksgiving. No one’s sure exactly. “Historically, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for the grocery[Read More…]
For all the talk of big-box retailers, drug stores, specialty grocers and dollar stores gobbling up a bigger share of the grocery pie, don’t count out the nation’s largest traditional supermarket. Kroger says it’s doing just fine, thank you. Kroger today reported its latest quarterly earnings, beating analysts’ expectations. For the year, earnings are up about 3%. “Not a particularly[Read More…]
A supermarket in northern Indiana may have stumbled upon the next new trend in do-it-yourself grocery shopping – not only can customers there check themselves out, but they can apparently let themselves in as well. On Thanksgiving night, when most people were resting off their turkey dinners, or getting an early start on their Black Friday shopping, some people inexplicably[Read More…]
It’s not Walmart. It’s not even Aldi. The new grocery low-price leader is – would you believe – Dollar General? That’s not what Walmart would have you believe. The company trumpeted its price leadership at an investors conference last week, and the Wall Street Journal today headlined a Deutsche Bank price-comparison study that crowned Walmart the cheapest option. But while[Read More…]
Many products in your local grocery store are about to turn pink – and that could produce some green, to help fight breast cancer. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and many manufacturers produce special pink packaging this time of year, to signify that they’re donating money to the cause. And coupon companies and grocery stores are getting into[Read More…]
Sure, you like your local grocery store, but have you “liked” them? A roundup of the most and least popular grocery retailers on social media sites (see the full list below) can yield some interesting insights, though it also shows that “likes” aren’t necessarily everything. Florida-based Publix was recently criticized (in “Frozen & Refrigerated Buyer” magazine) for being “technology-challenged”: “Yes,[Read More…]
Walmart recently announced that you can earn a 5% credit by buying some of its healthier store-brand products. Kroger recently discovered that you can earn $7.2 million for buying its store-brand microwave popcorn. A Colorado jury this week awarded that chunk of change to 59-year-old Wayne Watson, who says he developed a chronic condition called “popcorn lung” following his enthusiastic[Read More…]
