Who Won The Week Pt. 6
This week is a shoulder week, sandwiched between Mother's Day and Memorial Day Weekend. Retailers might try and keep some powder dry in shoulder weeks, in the anticipation of running stronger promotions when there is more money being spent on groceries. Having said that, there isn't really any downtime in retail since every week counts if you need to hit the typical +2% growth versus last year targets.
We have just added all Kroger banners as well as some strong regional banners to our map, search here for your store. For our analysis this week we have turned our attention to Sheboygan, WI, and selected just three banners: Kroger's Pick N Save, Meijer, and Festival Foods. Festival Foods is a regional banner with just 42 stores, all of which are in the great state of Wisconsin.
One thing to note is the large page count of the Meijer Weekly Ad - albeit it does contain promotions that run across multiple weeks which drives up the page count. Never the less a high page count is going to diminish the front-page performance. Both Pick N Save and Festival Foods start their promotional weeks on a Wednesday, a tried-and-tested choice
| Banner | Start Of Ad Week | Page Count |
|---|---|---|
| Meijer | Sunday | 49 |
| Pick N Save | Wednesday | 12 |
| Festival Foods | Wednesday | 6 |
The Front Pages
Meijer manage to squeeze a good number of promotions and offers onto the front page of the weekly circular, despite the page count and smaller page size.
Who Won
The Kroger banner, Pick N Save, "won the week" with nearly 50% of our AI shoppers choosing an item from their front page. The combination of a high number of promos from a wide range of categories stood them in good stead. Festival Foods coming a respectable second place given that it does not have the buying power of either Kroger or Meijer. Pick N Save's top items were avocados, salmon fillets and Breyer ice cream.
Key Take-Aways
There are some lessons to be learned from Festival Foods performance this week. It had a similar selection of featured items (Salmon, Chicken Breast and Avocados) to Pick N Save but was priced higher. Understandably, price will win over the price-conscious shopper. Given the relative differences in banner size, it is surprising to see Festival Foods going head-to-head with Pick N Save when it knows that it will lose on price. With a full view into the Festival Foods entire promotion calendar for this week DecaSIM's AI Shoppers would have found those items that would differentiate Festival's front page while remaining relevant to its customers, and therefore driving baskets off the front page.
Get in touch to find out how your geography and banner perform.