Five Lessons Retailers Can Learn From Whole Foods Market's Q1 Performance

O que o Whole Foods fez que você pode fazer na sua marca para reverter uma perspectiva de crise... Five Lessons Retailers Can Learn From Whole Foods Market's Q1 Performance Comment Now Whole Foods Market reported a great start to their fiscal year, with Q1 results showing growth on key metrics including sales, share, and comp-sales versus a year ago and sales up over 10% to $4.7 billion. Retail isn’t for the faint of heart and grocery is among the most challenging segments within the category, with razor-thin margins and brutal competitors. Whole Foods attributed their strong quarter to a wide variety of initiatives. What are the secrets to Whole Foods Market’s strong performance that might be applicable to other retailers? 1. Don’t Take Awareness for Granted Marketers of established brands often assume that awareness is adequate if it’s above 80% in the vicinity of specific retail outlets, focusing marketing initiatives on in-store marketing vehicles that reach shoppers who are already there. But general brand awareness can be far too blunt a measure to determine what is really going on in the minds of target consumers. It’s often said that a problem well stated is half solved. Successfully isolating the precise vulnerabilities of a retailer’s current state is a step often missed by even the finest marketers. General perceptions that Whole Foods prices are likely very high are not new, with some referring to the retailer as Whole Paycheck. To combat perceptions of high cost per item, Whole Foods launched entries like 365 Everyday Value® as competitively priced on staples versus competitive grocery outlets. This is not the kind of perception that is successfully overcome with a one-off communications effort, especially in the world of grocery where competitors constantly bombard the airways with price and item campaigns. Whole Foods addressed this long-existing perception with the launch of its Values Matter national campaign on television and in print. According to the Q1 analysts’ call, the campaign has doubled awareness among Whole Foods Market’s target audience, and showed increases in key attributes like value perception and shopping intention versus competitors. 2. Partner to Meet Consumer Needs Faster Consumers increasingly demand that retailers meet the “I want what I want when I want it” standard, as defined by consumer shopping expert Dr. Kit Yarrow in her recent book Decoding The New Consumer Mind. Whole Foods Market is wise to recognize their consumers are quickly coming to expect fast, low-cost delivery and don’t particularly care how the retailer makes it happen. While they could have been investing intensive time and capital to handle home delivery themselves like Walmart and AmazonFresh are doing, Whole Foods instead chose to partner with Instacart, the current darling of Sand Hill Road. Part of the sharing economy, Instacart is a collection of independent contractors who shop based on a list they receive from shoppers and deliver to the doorstep of each for a reasonable cost ($3.99–$5.99), sometimes within an hour. Instacart is not an exclusive provider to Whole Foods, also providing shopping services to major retailers like Costco, Safeway, and regional boutique retailers across the 15 markets where they operate in the U.S. Whole Foods Market has already seen online delivery hit $1 million since the partnership began in September, with online delivery sales as high as 5% in some stores. Perhaps Whole Foods will decide that building their own delivery infrastructure is a wise investment, but in the meantime they are meeting the demands of IWWIWWIWI consumers immediately and learning the ropes on online shopping and delivery, which will better inform all future decisions. Whole Foods’ partnership model doesn’t stop with Instacart. In order to meet consumers’ expectations to pay how they want, Whole Foods was one of the first retailers to accept Apple Pay. 3. Don’t Burn Resources on Faux Loyalty It seems that every retailer has a loyalty program…at least in name. But over-proliferation of meaningless point programs among increasingly cynical consumers has made many loyalty programs not worth the cards they are printed on. Whole Foods has been a late arrival to the affinity club party. Arguably this has been a missed opportunity. Perhaps slow was the correct speed to approach, as Whole Foods is now in the midst of an affinity test that will hopefully translate to meaningful increases in consumer value. With useless cards spilling out of most wallets, at this point loyalty programs must be truly meaningful to customers or shouldn’t exist at all. 4. Excel In-Store For all retailers, in-store experience is what really matters. A good one means another visit is in the future. A bad one means this date could be the last. In their Q1 earnings call, Whole Foods reiterated their commitment to an unparalleled shopping experience, the refreshing of older stores, and a commitment to improving value and increasing product transparency. These are familiar words bordering on cliché, though most Whole Foods shoppers seem happy with the state of their stores. 5. Continuously Test Innovations Consumers often don’t know what they want until they see it. To keep up, successful retails need to be in constant “test and learn” mode, with different initiatives in the hopper to see what might stick when. To wit, Whole Foods is considering offering a variant of their employee health program to consumers that includes nutrition, cooking, and health assessments based in their hometown headquarters of Austin, Texas. Also consistent with their holistic lifestyle offering, they are testing microbreweries in some stores, after debuting one in Houston. These are initiatives that seem to further differentiate them from competitive grocers. Whole Foods has had their share of tough quarters over their 35-year history, but things have really come together lately as indicated by the kick-off of their fiscal year. Their initiatives addressing consumer satisfaction are serving them well and can offer ideas to satisfy the needs of IWWIWWIWI consumers across the entire retail segment. This article is available online at: http://onforb.es/1yPGlRq

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