By Lucas Witman
On December 1, Walgreens celebrated the opening of its 8,000th location, and for many of those visiting the new Los Angeles store, the experience was likely quite different from previous visits to the drug store chain. Described by the company as a “flagship” location, the unique new store serves not only those seeking health and beauty care products, prescription medicines and other typical drug store fare, but it also features fresh cut sushi and sashimi, an upscale coffee bar, a juice and smoothie bar, a self-serve frozen yogurt station, hundreds of wraps, sandwiches, salads and other fresh food offerings, a wine section with over 700 labels and a variety of expert beauty and grooming services.
Walgreens is not the only retail chain to recently experiment with dramatic changes in its store model. Big box stores Target, Wal-Mart and Office Depot, as well as several convenience store chains, including Texas-based Buc-ee’s, Michigan-based Towns Mart and New York-based NOCO Express have all attempted innovative new store designs in an effort to reach out to potential new customers.
Today, the retail industry as a whole is in the midst of a widespread store shakeup. Small stores are going big, while big stores are going small. Stores known for offering one category of products are being adapted to sell others. And retailers are dramatically altering the physical space of their stores in order to better serve a 21st Century clientele.
“There was a point in time several years ago, when we were all about the strategic placement of the brand on the shelf,” said Alex Siskos, Vice President of Business Insights for leading sales and marketing services company CROSSMARK. “Very quickly, our industry moved to space management of the entire aisle and now we are extremely focused on the shopper and the various stimuli surrounding and ultimately impacting her decision at shelf.”
CROSSMARK, in collaboration with top industry consulting and research firm Kantar Retail, recently released its Know Your Space 2012 study, which provides a unique independent, large-scale and cross-channel look at how space is being allocated within the retail sector. The study, based on field work conducted between July and September 2011, identifies key retail merchandising approaches being implemented by major retailers operating in a variety of channels, including grocery, drug, dollar, mass merchandise and club stores. In addition, the study also identifies changes that have taken place since the first iteration of the study, published in 2010.
“Know Your Space 2012 provides key trends and insights across major channels and retailers, with implications for merchandising, category management and shopper marketing,” said Siskos. “It provides valuable information for manufacturers to understand evolving store formats and shifts in product range and space allocation, as well as for retailers interested in their competitive landscape.”
The Know Your Space 2012 study examines 16 different departments within a large statistical sample population of diverse retail stores, comparing the linear footage of store departments as well as the space devoted to certain categories of products and space devoted to promotional materials. It revealed a number of interesting trends currently spreading across the retail landscape.
“The biggest change in space has been moving away from general merchandise and into consumables,” said Siskos. Many retailers that would often in the past invest in products with high profit margins, but often slower turns, are now using available space to expand their consumable products footprint. Retailers today are focusing particular attention on consumable products that invite repeated purchases.
Another spatial shift observed in the study relates to the growth in online retail sales. Today’s retail stores are forced to compete with Amazon.com and a host of other online sites that sell the same products they do. As a result, retailers are introducing a host of interactive content to the retail space, creating increased opportunities to connect customers with a product or with the company brand itself.
One shift U.S. retailers seem poised to make, if they have not yet fully embraced it, is a move toward a European retail model practiced by British-based grocery and mass merchandise chain Tesco, among others. Tesco, which prides itself on “bringing the supermarket to you,” has shifted its retail model to more fully incorporate online sales. Customers can purchase groceries and other goods online, pay for them at home, then simply stop by the store for pickup. For many of Tesco’s customers, grocery shopping no longer involves pushing a cart down an aisle, but rather the stores have been designed to facilitate easy pickup of pre-gathered products. According to Know Your Space 2012, this is a growing trend in the United States as well with Wal-Mart and others already experimenting with the model.
Another change noted in the Know Your Space 2012 study is that many retailers today are not content to inhabit a single channel, but rather they are adapting their spaces so that customers feel they can visit multiple retail channels by stopping by a single store. Walgreens, for example, through its flagship stores, offers customers the experience of visiting a drug store, but also elements of a grocery and mass merchandise store as well. Similarly, many grocery stores are expanding their spaces and making cosmetic changes, so that customers there feel that they are visiting a warehouse club store. And dollar stores are getting in on the action as well. “You start to see fresh produce walking into a dollar store,” said Siskos. “Instead of going to multiple places, [retailers are asking] what can I do to keep you in my store?”
Adapting across channels also takes the form of downsizing. Mass merchandisers such as Target have created smaller store models in order to adapt to unique geographies and customer bases. “Stores are getting smaller to fit more urban, high traffic locations with smaller real estate,” said Siskos. “Stores can be smaller, and they can be customer service driven.”
At the heart of the changes detailed in the Know Your Space 2012 study, is a move toward what Siskos calls “experiential shopping.” While selling a product continues to be the primary goal of today’s retailer, the way in which this goal is accomplished is shifting away from product marketing and toward the marketing of the shopping experience itself. Stores are trying to get their customers to have more fun and are experimenting with ways to make the overall experience more enjoyable. According to Siskos, “Wal-Mart reminds us that they know you’re in their stores for an average of 21 minutes. They are focused on what they can do to keep you in the store for an additional three to five minutes.”
Still, another conclusion made in the study is that when it comes to merchandising and space, retailers have yet to come to a single conclusion. “There’s still a lot of confusion,” said Siskos. Today’s retailers have many different options. What comes next and what trends ultimately come to dominate the industry are yet to be decided.
To learn more about CROSSMARK’s and Kantar Retail’s Know Your Space 2012 study, visit http://www.kantarretailiq.com/SpecialReport/SpecialReportSummary.aspx?id=533245.
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