.

Art Turock

Elite Performance Provocateur

HELPING CLIENTS PRACTICE WITH A

HEALTHY DISREGARD FOR THE UNREASONABLE

Copyright 2010Art Turock & Associates    425-814-3038    Webmaster Haley Ashland

Reinventing the Supermarket for a Money-Is-Tight Future

Every day business leaders face dismal economic news that cumulatively gives the impression that their sense of normalcy is hanging by a thread. Budget cuts, government stimulus packages, layoffs, and changing purchasing patterns among customers seem to call for drastic hunker down tactics to ride out dismal market conditions. Unfortunately, the lingering message is a signal of resignation to employees and customers, and the precursor for even more dire outcomes. In studying companies who prospered during economic downturns, the majority capitalized on emerging opportunities to fortify their competitive advantage. In fact, the supermarket was invented by King Kullen stores in 1933 during the Great Depression.

Economic downturns occur as openings for:

1. Gaining new business as customers are prone to switch vendors.

2. Using resource constraints to trigger process, marketing, and management innovations.

3. Attracting new talent that is suddenly hunting for jobs.

4. Capitalizing on associates’ willingness to go to unreasonable lengths in a crisis period.

5. Repositioning or reinventing products and services to address emerging customer needs to derive a first mover advantage.

Jaw dropping wakeup calls and hard-hitting practicality enables you to:

1. Study companies who prospered in the Depression and the current recession, not to benchmark their moves, but to reveal the generative questions the leaders contemplated.

2. Detect emerging latent needs of customers before they even have to ask.

3. Examine a proposed grocery store reinvention tailored to shoppers during an economic recession and recovery.

4. Examines the mistaken assumptions retailers are likely to adopt during a recession, which in the pursuit of apparent safety masks a prolonged death spiral as a company.

When the pace of external change exceeds the pace of internal change, this might be the wake up call you need.

Customer needs changed dramatically during this recession, yet the overwhelming majority of food retailers are doing the exact same 3 tweaks:

1. cutting costs,

2. lowering prices, and

3. adding private label SKUs.

Accordingly, they hope things will return to normal.

Unfortunately price cutting and hope are not strategies that gain competitive advantage.

Value Added Elements: 

Program features dozens of photos of innovative strategies being executed at store level. Attendees receive a 20-page program handout with questionnaires, charts, assessment tools designed to encourage  action back at work.

ART HAS ARGUABLY THE LARGEST COLLECTION OF RETAIL RECONNAISSANCE PHOTOS IN THE NATION.

Custom Food /Consumer Products Industry Topics