NEW ORLEANS -- The numbers unveiled at the 2007 NACS State of the Industry Summit in partnership with CSP in New Orleans have been staggering: industry sales well surpassing a half-trillion dollars, more than $400 billion in motor fuels sales and in-store sales increasing over $10 billion.
As NACS Chairman Sam Turner noted earlier in the Summit, We are where America shops. But how do they shop? A number of breakout sessions at the Summit addressed that issue in greater detail.
And, noted NACS President and CEO Hank Armour on [image-nocss] the last day of the Summit, these activities are just a few of the many NACS is developing with a more qualitative, consumer focused approach, as opposed to the quantitative sales approach that had been front and center.
One example, noted Armour, is the NACS 2007 Consumer Fuels Report www.nacsonline.com/gaskit2007, which looked at how more than 1,200 consumers said they behave at the pump. A lot of this we thought we knew, but this rich new data source also allowed us to speak with great confidence to the media and legislators about the issue of price gouging and price sensitivity, noted Armour.
Maybe you saw the NBC news reports that ran across the country (recently) where a reporter had some fun with our data, continued Armour. The reporter referenced NACS data to test whether consumers really do go out of their way to save a few cents per gallon, and soon found a willing driver, who drove across town to save about 45 cents for the journey. The kicker was when he told the price-sensitive customer, Hey, there's a penny on the ground. Want it?' and the customer said, No', noted Armour (KSDK-TV is one of the stations that ran the story, and has a link to the video online.)
NACS also included customer intercepts in the Ideas 2 Go 2006 video presentation at the NACS Show to add context to how consumers perceived the innovations highlighted. Expect to see much more of that this year, said Armour.
He also cited last month's agreement with London-based consulting firm H.I.M. that makes it the U.K. Global Partner for NACS State of the Industry (SOI) data initiatives in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Our Global SOI, which benchmarks industry performance across six regions of the world, will be highlighted at the Global Forum at the NACS Show in Atlanta this November and will incorporate H.I.M.'s Convenience Tracking Program (CTP), said Armour. This program provides best-in-class benchmarking across the 30 leading retailers in the UK and Ireland derived from face to face interviews with over 40,000 convenience shopper annually.
And, Armour, concluded, We continue to share the findings from the NACS/Coca-Cola Leadership Council, which focused on the teen customer.
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