US apple marketer Columbia Marketing International claims supermarkets can significantly boost their apple sales performance by making simple changes to their assortment, pricing and promotion strategies.
In a recently published report entitled Apple Category Performance, the company said America’s leading supermarket chains can generate up to three times more apple sales even after allowing for store size.
“We looked at three years of apple category performance data for retailers all over the US,” said CMI’s vice president of marketing Steve Lutz. “There are some fairly basic approaches used by top retailers to drive apple sales that the guys at the back of the pack miss. It appears that the specific tools consistently used by top supermarkets can be implemented by just about any retailer of any size, but are missed by low-performing supermarkets.”
According to the study, consumers follow cues from the retail in making purchasing decisions at point of sale. Successful retailers can steer consumers away from low-priced varieties to higher-priced lines through a combination of varietal selection, shelf positioning and merchandising.
“The research shows that when consumer reach the retail shelf they actively shop the category but ultimately purchase a single variety,” Lutz said. “Regular apple buyers are very cognisant of retail price promotions, which can actually create incentives to trade-down from a regular planned purchase at full price to a discounted item, reducing dollar performance.”
The study also showed that the most successful chains offer a wider variety of apples to their customers, with the top performing stores selling an average of 40 unique lines every week. Another key performance driver is how well the retailer uses niche and branded apples, the study found. The strongest retailers, said Lutz, are those who “maintain a larger assortment of niche and branded apples such as Ambrosia or Kiku, actively working to entice consumers to switch their purchases from lower priced segments into these more expensive but very flavourful apples.”
According to Nielsen Perishables Group. Apples accounted for 6.5 per cent of US produce dollar sales in the 52 weeks ending 28 December 2013. Approximately 70 per cent of US households purchased apples during that period, spending an average of US$4.26 per cent – an increase of 4.9 per cent on the previous year.
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