According to the December issue of the World Apple Report, the next development in retail will be customer management. The report, published by Belrose in Washington state defines the term as retailers using information from loyalty-card databases to retain existing customers, gain new loyal purchasers and increase the average spend of both groups.

Targeted promotions can then reward long-term loyalty. 'Clearly apples could benefit from being included among the products that are pitched to loyal customers and from knowing more about the shopping habits of loyalty-cardholders,' states the report. But retailers may not be so keen to share this information with suppliers. They should therefore be collecting their own information on the response to different apple category promotions by their customers' customers. 'They are more likely to be invited to the table if they bring their own set of useful information,' finds the report.

Still in its infancy, the concept of customer management could go as far as to analyse the relationships between different purchases. 'Is the Red Delicious buyer more likely to buy the store brand bread, while the Fuji buyer is more likely to buy the speciality brand?' asks the World Apple Report. Customer management is likely to be one more tool in an increasingly competitive retail produce industry in future years.

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