DALLAS -- The Mars vs. Venus dynamic aside, petroleum retail and convenience-store operatorsboth male and femaleare beginning to understand the growing power of women as a consumer segment and are actively seeking insight on how to better meet their needs.
Price, value and service stood out as critical factors when appealing to women, according to nine retailers and nine suppliers reviewing industry data and discussing their experiences at CSP's Capturing the Female Consumer roundtable held in Dallas last week.
The session's main [image-nocss] speaker, Deborah Grassi, retail industry and consumer markets consultant for Acxiom Corp., Conway, Ark., said c-store retailers must avoid insult pricing and provide an environment that women perceive as clean and safe. Beyond those initial challenges, retailers have to focus on how employees treat customers.
In her retail experience, which includes work with Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, Grassi recalled how she had conducted mystery shops at retail locations. The stores received the lowest scores when the associates opened their mouths, she said.
For retailers, the answer to approaching the female consumer lies not in one but a number of store-level attributes. [Women] want high quality, service and value with a price that's right, said Elizabeth Jack, marketing services manager, McLane Co., Temple, Texas. Jack also brought wholesale-level data to share with the group.
In her data of female c-store consumers, Jack revealed an awareness of price, with many respondents agreeing with the statement, I know the price I pay for most foods and goods I buy. This indicated a high level of price sensitivity if not for actual prices on specific products, to at least a price range on categories of products.
Other statements that received high levels of agreement were: It's important salespeople be knowledgeable and Service of personnel at a store is important.
Julie Whittle, category manager for 7-Eleven Inc., Dallas, agreed that service at the store-level is key to the female consumer, and unfortunately, in many ways, a store can fall short. If you don't have you're staffing right, for the female consumer, that tends to be important, she said. All it takes is to be one person short and then you have lines four-people deep. And it's hard to get that shopper back.
It's because that shopper [has many options] and can go elsewhere, Grassi of Acxiom said. They'll be quicker to write off that store.
Retailers' discussion about proper staffing led to talk of hiring additional people at peak times. This solution would only work, retailers noted, if managers can find the staff willing to take abbreviated shifts. It may work well for the checkout lines, but it could make associates mad and lead to turnover, Grassi said. But maybe the answer is hiring a senior citizen, because they don't want to make too much money because it interferes with social security.
Participating retailers also received a sample study of stores in their own chain, having submitted the addresses of high- and low-performing stores to Grassi prior to the meeting. At the day's lunch break, Grassi individually went over the results with retailers.
When the session resumed, Grassi explained how overlaying multiple databases onto chain-specific data can reveal shopping patterns and can help retailers better stock stores with items female consumers in their market areas would want. Part of the challenge, Grassi said, was convincing key players in a chain's leadership to take the information to heart, possibly altering some strategies to increase sales to the female demographic.
Most [executives] think like men, she said. And of course, they're the ones who started the stores. Change at the store level, she said, has to start at the top.
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