Convenience, price and selection are likely to be the three things you take into consideration when choosing which grocery store you shop at most often. You might be willing to compromise on one or two points sometimes, but when a store offers you all three, it is probably where you do most of your shopping. The stores themselves have control over the price and selection factors, but convenience is a wild card. They may try to control convenience by scouting out good locations, but you can only do so much to make the store easy for consumers to access.
In London, one market is trying to take convenience out of the equation. Waitrose, an upscale grocer, is facing competition from the newest Whole Foods Market in town and, while they are waiting for construction to be complete on one of their older stores, they have begun to offer chauffered car service – in eco-friendly Smart cars – that will take locals to the nearest open store. It can’t get much more convenient than that for consumers.
And if one of my local grocers decides to do the same thing, I might just have to reconsider where I do my shopping. At least it will save on gas – even if they don’t take the same route with Smart cars.
santos.
June 15, 2007if they give rides home, i would definitely patronize the grocery store that offers this service.
Leslie
June 15, 2007In Japan they have a free shuttle bus that will take you to a store that would normally be out of reach for people without cars. Maybe not as convienent for getting some groceries home but definatly better for the environment. I think too that people in America like to do their shopping all at once, as opposed to Japan where they like to shop a lot more frequently and there isn’t a lot of perservatives in the food.