Super Strategies for Super Grocers

What makes the Super 50 so super?

We could talk for hours about the achievements of the leading grocery retailers, but I think their success can be summed up with three key points:

Price

Looking at the top 10 grocery retailers, it’s easy to see that competitive pricing is an important factor for success. Three of these 10 are superstore chains – Walmart (1), Target (3) and Meijer (10) – whose sheer size and buying power give them the economies of scale to be low-price leaders. Among traditional grocers, Kroger (2) and Safeway (4) possess ample size and leverage to meet or beat the big boxes in markets where they compete.

Selection

Shoppers want variety, and the more brands they have to choose from, the more likely they’re going to shop retailers that offer such bounty. Grocers like Texas-based H-E-B (8) know this well, and they customize their selection not just city by city, but neighborhood by neighborhood.

Customer Experience

Along with price, this is arguably the most important factor to a grocer’s sustainable success: keeping shoppers happy time and time again. Few grocers grasp this concept better than Kroger, whose “Customer 1st” strategy keeps the retailer at the top of the heap by, among other things, investing aggressively in consumer insight data that helps to shape its loyalty programs. Other regional favorites like Publix (5), Hy-Vee (17) and Wegmans (19) consistently rank highly among consumers’ favorite places to shop.

The grocery business is fiercely competitive – getting a handle on these three areas will give retailers an edge on their multichannel competition.

Read PG’s ranking and analysis of this year’s Super 50 in our May 2014 issue, in print and here at PG.com.