Despite its reach and ubiquity, the convenience-store industry lacks the digital and technological scale of other retail channels—and that’s holding it back, said Derek Gaskins, head of guest experience at bp, during a NACS Show education session on Tuesday in Chicago.
“The beauty of the convenience business is no one dominates,” said Gaskins. “There's no Walmart or Amazon or this channel.”
Even bp, which operates about 10,000 U.S. stores, doesn’t dominate the space, he said. The largest players don’t necessarily have the most influence. That fragmentation is one of the biggest struggles for the convenience-store industry, Gaskins said.
With about 152,255 total convenience stores in the United States according to NACS, 95,000 are independently owned or single-store operations. Because of this, the sector faces unique challenges when implementing sophisticated technologies, such as retail media networks or loyalty programs, he said.
“When [c-store are] trying to engage with true tech companies, they may not even know that we exist or what the opportunity is,” Gaskins said.
One major consequence of fragmentation is a lack of access to customer data. When convenience retailers partner with third-party platforms such as DoorDash or Uber Eats, they often lose the direct connection to the consumer. This limits their ability to analyze behavior, build loyalty and grow sales.
Without control of their data, convenience stores may miss out on opportunities in modern digital commerce, including personalized promotions or in-app add-on sales. Meanwhile, retailers in other sectors are seeing significant e-commerce growth.
“The problem,” Gaskins said, “is the industry's lack of scale and tech integration.”
To address that, bp is making large-scale investments into data ownership and digital infrastructure.
“So as a company, we're investing tens, if not hundreds, of millions [of dollars] to make sure we own our data, that we can create a real customer journey and lifetime and deliver that kind of value,” Gaskins said.
The key, he said, is not just owning the data, but knowing how to use it—and preparing for where the industry is headed.
“We need to see where these trends are going and figure out a collective way to do it, to leverage scale,” he said.
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