Panera Bread Interior Review

I finally made it over to Panera Bread for a sandwich, and while the sandwich was good (I got a Southwest Turkey sandwich) the in-store marketing was amazing! Their lighting we terrific, the layout was good, and the branding was phenomenal.

If you are interested in retail design, I highly suggest checking out Panera Bread. While you are there, pick up a sandwich, they are tasty!

Panera Bread Website

General Mills Posts Healthy, Cholesterol Reduced, Profit

Tyko, Enron, WorldCom and the likes should take a lesson from General Mills and focus on selling, rather than buying other companies and diversifying their businesses in hopes of catching the wave of investor sentiment.

I buy all types of cereal, but lots of General Mills cereals. They use whole grain, offer deep discounts from time to time, and have great product selection at chain stores that I often shop at: CVS, Stop and Shop, and Shaw's.

Speaking of which, I bet General Mills is the channel manager for a couple of these chains. I will check up on that and confirm.

Reuters Article

Bizarre Google Finance Search Result

If you haven't heard, Google has a new Finance search portal. Looks to me like Google is becoming more and more like Yahoo!. Will they soon have more to their front page than the simple search field? If so, it will probably be customized by the user.

Anyway, the purpose of this post relates to the query "chain store marketing" into the Google Financial search engine. What is the result? See for yourself.

Spoiler:
Oracle is the result. Why? I have no idea!

Are you going to buy Michaels?

Are you going to buy Michaels? That question should only be posed to investment firms. Michaels Stores, the company that sells arts and crafts supplies, has hired JP Morgan to research and initiate a sale of the company, Reuters reports.

Also mentioned in the article is news that the CEO, R. Michael Rouleau, is retiring.

This past weekend, my fiance and I took a trip to the Carolinas, and it really sunk in how big Michaels is when we saw a store right away. I just read that they have almost 1000 stores, including Arrons framing stores. Who knew the arts and crafts business was so big?

Banana Republic gets it.

I went to Banana Republic today with my $15 gift card (a birthday present I received in the mail), and a 15% off card also received in the mail. I had shopped online to view their products from the comfort of my home before my visit, too.

After paying for $92 worth of their products purchased for approximately $70, I received a survey form on my receipt. If I fill out the survey online within the next five days (already done), I get 10% off my next purchase. Plus, I finally got enough "points" on my Banana Republic card to get a $10 off gift card in the mail.

So while Banana Republic has certainly "got" me, what else have the got? They've got the concept of syncronized communications down pat, and are using it to give their customers what they like.

What do customers like? Customers like:

• Getting mail, especially not junk mail. Moreso on their birthday.
  
• Shopping. Duh, if they didn't like shopping, they wouldn't be customers.
  
• Seeing the same products in the store that they saw online.
  
• Getting rewarded for being a good customer.

N.B. - I had to use the two card separately on two different transactions, i.e. they couldn't be stacked. Not a big deal though.

The Brand Value of Chain Stores

My fiance is always saying that she is nervous depositing money to online only banks. She feels that they could simply "disappear" with her money. This is a valid concern, and makes me think of the brand value inherent in chain store locations, beyond the obvious in-store merchandising.

Bricks and mortar stores proves to the world that the institution is:

• Accessible - customers can access them when they need to
  
• Reliable - the business is not going away
• Financially Sound - the business is responsible with money

This is all well and good, but bricks and mortars stores do so much more! Yes, I know, they are there primarily for offering products and services, but let's keep our focus to their impact on the brand.

What's amazing about bricks and mortar stores is that they are big, tangible, and out there in the REAL WORLD. Yes, that's the best part. Creating memorable experiences for customers and potential customers is the most powerful way to impact them. Being in the physical domain with customers is much more effective than being in a separate medium, like advertisements are. Chain stores create awareness more than any other advertising. However, they are very expensive indeed. They must be staffed and maintained.

The key here is to operate these chain store bricks and mortar locations as efficiently, impressively, and as inexpensively as possible. That may seem obvious, but some executives may find it easier to close up shops. One store which understands the value of the bricks and mortar is CVS. It seems their business model is to use the their basic goods to pay for the stores, and make their money on prescriptions.

Office Max is closing a bunch of stores...

Office Max is closing a bunch of its stores, and if you've been to some of them, you might know why. They just don't have the best signage, merchandising, layout, and promotions.

http://www.informedbanking.com/officemax_closing_110_stores.html

Speaking of signage, I went to an Ikea recently and was blown away by the lighting that they used to highlight their signs. NICE!

Chain Store Marketing

While the challenge of marketing in multiple stores is substantial, it gets even more complicated by the fact that each location has its own customer base, and unique geographically based sales opportunity.

What does that mean? For example, if a location is by the beach, there is a much greater opportunity to sell beach balls, blankets, suntan lotion, and grills. While this is obvious to a single store owner, a chain store has to think about these as execptions to their overall strategy.

So, just as customers change from location to location, their activities and needs change from location to location.

Third post is the charm

A lesson from grocers.

Successful grocers always put the fresh items in the front of the store, so when you first walk in, you are greeted with a good thing™.

Retailers that don't sell food caught onto this successful strategy by constantly changing the messages presented to customers so as to keep their attention. There is a great ice cream store nearby my home that puts up different catchy and clever messages on their sign every week, like "Think warm thoughts!" during this early springtime season.

When you have more than one location, this can become a serious challenge. What chain store marketers need to understand is that they need to maintain control as they gain exposure. (There is an oft-quoted inverse correlation between exposure and control.) What's more, opinions and cultures change from location to location, so the same catchy and clever messages won't work in every location.

Anyone have any ideas on this matter?

What are the big chains?

Most of us are familiar with the idea of retail chain stores. These include fast food restaurants, shoe stores, clothing retailers, wireless phone retailers, retail banks, and rental car companies.

It is surprising to realize that while a retail chain that has 100 locations, some have several thousand locations. Yes, thousands, even tens of thousands. While these numbers are staggering, the issues facing these companies starts to get interesting around the 50-location mark. The point is that the scalability of a retail marketing system starts to break down at a certain point, where the cost-benefit structure of more locations, hence more customers, changes for the worse.

In ecommerce, for example, you pretty much have fixed costs. It costs a marginal amount of more money to serve millions more customers. So if you increase the traffic, you increase sales, and revenues, but do not increase your operational costs. In the bricks and mortar world, you increase the traffic, and your operational costs skyrocket, unless you use the right combination of communications, instructions, and processes.

We'll evaluate some of these processes here and open them up for discussion amongst our readers. Thanks again for visiting!

Welcome to "Are you going to buy that?"

At this blog, we will feature strategies and techniques for the chain store marketing industries. We will dive into the technical details and logistical challenges of creating, launching, and maintaining retail marketing promotions and campaigns throughout tens, hundreds, and thousands of locations.

This is only our first post so be sure to check back here often.