Convenience will be “decisive in determining the market winners” in grocery going forward, according to Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive of IGD.
Denney-Finch was speaking at IGD’s The Big Debate, which took place in London on 6 October.
Denney-Finch told delegates that convenience is “already more important to shoppers than they consciously realise”, referencing a recent study that found that only 8 per cent of shoppers say that convenience is paramount when grocery shopping, compared to 46 per cent who cite price and 44 per cent who cite quality as being of the utmost importance.
“And yet, when we see how people actually shop, location is still paramount,” she said. “Shoppers want to live for the moment, buying what they fancy when they fancy it.”
The definition of convenience doesn’t necessarily correspond to traditional convenience stores, she added, encouraging retailers to “keep looking at the whole shopping journey through shoppers’ eyes and asking, ‘Is it really as convenient as it possibly can be?’”
The IGD Big Debate featured a number of leading speakers from across the grocery sector, including Tesco’s Dave Lewis, Asda’s Andy Clarke, Mike Coupe of Sainsbury’s and Jan Zijderveld of Unilever.
The event climaxed with the annual IGD Awards (pictured), which saw presentations to the Co-operative, which won the IGD President’s Cup, Wyke Farms, which took the IGD Sustainable Future Award, Greggs, which won the IGD Health and Wellness Award, and United Biscuits, which won the IGD Consumer Insight Excellence Award, among others.
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
