The normal categorisation of shoppers, their
attitudes, behaviours and lifestages, does not easily apply to supermarket shopping. Shopping can be a social activity, a means to an end and at times, just a chore. The weekly shop falls into the last category and the supermarkets have their work cut out persuading us to frequent their premises. If we didn’t really have to eat, we surely wouldn’t bother trudging round aisles of food?
Having got our attention through lack of an alternative (even MPs with their £400 food allowance have to buy their food somewhere!), they then have to pitch themselves to get the best market share possible. Value for money is undoubtedly much higher profile now than only a short while ago, but, although
ASDA and
Aldi have lifted their market share recently, it’s barely dented the superiority of
Tesco. We already know that more money is spent in Tesco than anywhere else in the country (personally, I take the view that they get enough of everybody else’s money, so don’t get mine). In my town, that leaves my two favourites:
Morrisons and
Sainsbury’s.
Morrisons has a fantastic, reasonably priced offer, but Sainsbury’s, with an
announcement today of everything being on the up, has service AND a smile.
I’m not sure what kind of customer service training programme Sainsbury’s implements, but it works. The staff are always friendly, they always smile and they manage the art so well practised by the Queen, they actually seem interested in you!
I am, of course, basing my view on a very unrepresentative sample of one – my local store in High Wycombe - but as these staff are putting up with difficult circumstances by trading out of a “tent” with limited offer, I would say either the High Wycombe staff are particularly good at customer rapport, or they are representative of Sainsbury’s staff everywhere.
The Sainsbury’s tent is a stop gap whilst the new, shiny and, at 55,000 sqft, truly huge*, store is built. The staff will deserve their new working environment and I shall be visiting them there.
*
Telegraph readers note appropriate use of the word – according to
SnapShop, an average Sainsbury’s store is only 40,000 sqft of selling space.
