A leading retail analyst has said that while UK retailer Waitrose’s commitment to packaging reduction initiatives is a ‘determined step forward’, the retailer needs to ensure that it maintains its focus on basics such as customer service and product quality.
Thomas Brereton, a retail analyst for GlobalData, was commenting following Waitrose’s announcement that it is trialling a number of sustainable ventures at its Botley Road store, in Oxford, with a view to reducing packaging.
New Measures
These include a dedicated ‘refillable zone’, the UK’s first supermarket frozen pick-and-mix, and a borrow-a-box scheme, which the retailer is branding under the banner ‘Waitrose Unpacked’.
“Although only a trial, this announcement shows a determined step from Waitrose to meet its ambitious commitments to eliminating unnecessary plastic and packaging, building on the £1 million fund pledged in May to five organisations at the forefront of plastic reduction and its backing of the UK Plastics Pact in March,” Brereton said in a briefing note.
Brereton pointed to GlobalData’s own monthly tracker survey for March, which showed that 94% of consumers believe that it is the responsibility of retailers to act sustainably, while 80% believe that retailers are currently not doing enough to address such issues.
“Sustainability will certainly be one of retail’s buzzwords for the next decade, with the ‘Blue Planet effect’ rapidly changing consumers’ opinions on issues of sustainability,” he said.
“Strong sustainability credentials are also a more important issue for Waitrose than for other retailers, with the most sustainability conscious demographics – generally older, female, and more affluent shoppers – significantly overlapping with Waitrose’s core customer base, where over half of shoppers are 55+ years old,” Brereton added.
Novel Concepts
However, the long-term success of the trial will depend on Waitrose’s “ability to integrate these novel concepts in store. Waitrose must ensure that other points of differentiation – the quality credentials of the products, in-store visual merchandising, etc. – are not compromised as a result. Although sustainability is of growing concern to shoppers, it lags behind criteria of customer service and quality in importance when choosing a supermarket,” Brereton said.
In addition, William Grimwade, a consumer analyst for GlobalData, added that refillable shopping could give Waitrose a “localist, friendly appeal over other nearby supermarkets. On top of this, excessive plastic use has become an increasingly important issue to consumers.”
According to a 2017 Global Data consumer survey, some 65% of UK consumers see refillable/reusable containers as a factor in environmentally friendly packaging.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.
