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Articles | Frugal Food and Recipes
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Saving Time and Money at the Grocery Store... in the Electronic Age
by Paul Davis
Most experts agree that customer loyalty in the grocery sector is virtually dead. Ten
years ago it was somewhat unusual for a consumer to drive past the closest
grocery store to shop at a competing store. Today, within a few
mile radius, eight supercenters and chains can be fighting it out, in
a market, which the experts might say can only support three or four.
So while the chains struggle to find their niche and battle on price,
the price conscious shopper benefits.
It’s a critical
juncture for the grocers. Food price inflation has softened and
along with flat demand, has caused profit margins to decrease in the supermarket
channel. Many industry observers believe that the supermarket industry
has failed to believe that the so-called “time-crunched” shopper
will, in fact, travel to a number of stores to find the deals and products
they are looking for. And gas prices be damned, they will do so
even if it means extending the overall duration of their shopping trip.
Today, the fragmentation of the grocery-shopping trip is an undeniable
trend in the industry. So, today’s grocery shopper is prepared
to use their feet and cars to save money but more than ever they are using
their fingers, their laptops and even their handhelds to save significant
dollars, every week.
In general, today’s
consumer has turned into the “pre-shopper extraordinaire”.
Whether it’s clothing, electronics, automotive or computer, the
consumer will do her homework first, on-line. Comparison shopping
sites rule the internet allowing shoppers to learn more about the products
they wish to purchase and then find the best price. With the growth of
e-commerce, price comparison has become the dominant theme for on-line
shoppers. So the comparison- shopping world has become the focus of a
new breed of buyer,” the prosumer”, the proactive consumer.
Now it’s time to welcome the grocery “prosumer” to the
electronic age. For ions, the sharp grocery shopper has saved
by comparing prices in the weekly flyers/circulars that arrive on
your doorstep, via your daily newspapers. Flyer production is
a multi-billion dollar business and research indicates that an amazing
67%(Newspaper Association of America) of female heads of households
use the flyers to plan their shopping trips. Similarly, manufacturers
across the United States offered $375 billion, that’s right
billion, in paper coupons last year, everything from peanut butter
to laundry detergent.
Until recently,
the planning component required effort to manually sift through the
weekly circulars to identify the best deals and to prepare the shopping
list.But things are
changing and changing fast. Free on-line services are now available
where weekly advertised deals are right
at the consumers fingertips with the shopping list only a few keystrokes
away.
Consumers
can select the stores they shop at, make a list of the products they
want and then search for the best deals or they can simply skim the
flyers by store, similar to the way they used to look at the paper
flyers. They can also search by brand or category. The output
is a shopping list that breaks down the purchases they wish to make
by store and shows the savings at each store, as well as the overall
savings.
So for grocery savings in the electronic age, it can be as easy as “click,
pick and save”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paul Davis is fhe CEO of mygrocerydeals.com www.mygrocerydeals.com
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