Industry: Buying Groups Buying groups STAG and Intersport give us their view on the industry this month H
ow was December/Christmas trading? I know it’s now February and Christmas seems a long time ago, but perhaps now is the time to reflect?
The weather certainly had a massive impact on December trading leading up to Christmas in many ways.
Many high streets were inaccessible, out of town shopping centres were cut off and deliveries from mail order and online companies incurred massive delays. Not great for anyone apart from the retailers that managed to open their shops and take advantage of local consumers that were unable to reach stores further afield.
The impact the weather had on people playing sport was also a major factor, as with sporting fixtures delayed or cancelled the need for sporting equipment and accessories was reduced.
Once again, we had a diverse range of comments from STAG members about this period. These ranged from ‘I could not trade at all’ to ‘sales were excellent’.
Generally, we feel that although the weather did not have a positive effect on already tough trading conditions STAG members fared well when compared to some industries.
The adverse weather conditions were not bad for everyone though; for instance Hi-Tec achieved its best December sales for 17 years. It is an in- stock company that was able to take advantage of huge orders placed for immediate delivery of boots.
As STAG and Freedom members were open to buy in December due to the lack of big forward orders, this certainly paid off. In fact Hi-Tec achieved its highest level of turnover ever with STAG during 2010.
Ricky Chandler Managing director, STAG
ne of the largest areas of growth in consumer marketing is customer loyalty, whether through the traditional approach of offering great product and service, or with the increasingly popular use of ‘loyalty schemes’ with data capture and targeting for a more individual approach.
Many retailers have adopted a loyalty scheme approach, but too often are in danger of reducing profits by using them purely as a way of giving existing customers more discount rather than rewarding increased spending and loyalty.
Schemes need to be smart and integrated into the full marketing programme, to deliver real relevance and perceived benefit to customers. Customer behaviour could be influenced positively, and ultimately deliver a far greater profit to the bottom line as well as enhanced brand and customer equity. It’s no secret that the new generation of consumers has become increasingly sophisticated and demanding in its expectations. It wants to take control of how it interacts with the services it consumes. Loyalty cards are a proven way to successfully attract new customers, foster repeat business and grow the value of each customer. They enable a company to compile a database of information about cardholders’ purchasing trends, aiding advertising campaigns and future targeting. However the real success is about how well you capture and leverage knowledge to drive attractive customer offers, whilst ensuring that the management and process of the scheme are cost-effective: driving rather than draining the business.
Fundamental to protecting your business is encouraging customers to use you as their supplier of preference, even going out of their way to choose you over your competitors.
While initially being seen as a tool used by large supermarket chains, more and more loyalty schemes have been taken up by independent retailers, and with the wide variety of different sports within our trade this has become a great resource to target consumers effectively.
Within the Intersport group, members have been running loyalty schemes independently, while Intersport offers its own Reward Club Card. Designed to be compatible with different systems and giving complete independence on how they want to run the scheme, the scheme gives members the additional opportunity to opt into group campaigns, therefore benefitting from certain economies of scale.
Susan Herbert
Intersport UK marketing and communications manager
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www.sgb-sports.com
View from the industry O
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