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Page 1 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
Serving Your Customers
This Holiday Season Some Helpful Tips from GasBuddy
Page 2 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
Table of Contents
3 Serving Your Customers This Holiday
3 Tips from GasBuddy and How We Can Help
6 Working with GasBuddy
7 Key features and benefits
Page 3 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
Serving Your
Customers This
Holiday Season
-- Some Helpful Tips from GasBuddy--
Whether a single-shop independent store owner
or part of a nationwide chain of convenience
stores, you may not think that fuel retailers play
a role in holiday commerce.
And you’d be wrong.
While fuel costs remain low, overall sales for fuel
retailers and convenience stores with fuel sales:
“Retailers are … bullish on the convenience store
industry’s business prospects. More than three
in four retailers (78%) said they are optimistic
about the convenience store industry, an
increase from 73% last year.”
Despite mixed feelings going into last year, it
ended up being a strong holiday season for
retailers of all types--and Election-based
uncertainty is giving way to overall optimism for
the 2016 holidays.
“Despite the year’s somewhat deflationary retail
environment overall, holiday sales saw solid
growth in 2015. Consumers happily shopped
online, with many “very satisfied” with the
experience. Bricks-and-mortar stores created
unique experiences. And technology has
continued to allow innovative ways to build
loyalty, increase delivery options and provide
visibility into inventory. Looking ahead to 2016,
it’s clear that retailers are getting better at
understanding shoppers’ needs, wants and
desires.”
1 (NACS 2016 study)
2 “2016 Retail Holiday Planning Playbook,” National Retail
Federation (NRF)
Well, we’re well into the holiday season--
a season that brought in $626 billion in
in-store and online sales last year,
according to the NRF, an average of
$806 spent per person on gifts and
holiday-related spending last year.
According to Convenience Store Decisions,
consulting giant PwC predicts holiday spending is
expected to reach its highest point since the
Great Recession--increasing by 10 percent over
last year.
Page 4 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
While “Black Friday” -- the day after Thanksgiving
-- was for years the traditional unofficial kickoff,
in recent years, holiday shopping, or at the very
least, holiday promotions, have started earlier
and earlier. According to the NRF, last year more
than half of retailers started their holiday
promotions before Labor Day (September 5), a
trend that continued this year.
Some shoppers embraced this:
From a poll taken in early October, nearly 10
percent of shoppers “considered their holiday
shopping complete,” and nearly 20 percent plan
to have their shopping done “before November
begins.”
And … some didn’t:
In a scientific poll of 1,000 American adults, 73
percent agree with the statement that “it is
annoying that the holiday shopping season has
gotten earlier.” Forty-eight percent strongly
agree. Just 21 percent disagreed.
“The great news is the retail store is not
dead. But the retail store that does not
have a meaningful relationship with the
consumer is dead.”
-- Steve Barr, U.S. Retail and Consumer Sector
Leader, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Regardless of your take on holiday calendar creep, there is still a LOT of shopping to be done between
Thanksgiving and Christmas--and a huge opportunity for you to provide a valuable service for consumers
looking to make a quick purchase as they travel.
And while most of the buzz was around mobile and online shopping, physical stores continue to play an
important role in holiday shopping:
Most everyone, from the go-getters to the procrastinators, still have to finish (or even start) their
shopping. And many will be turning to you as they travel from Thanksgiving through New Years:
87% of shoppers are still very likely to purchase at stores this year
75% of total credit sales happen in the store environment.
82%of them actually prefer brick and mortar to online buying
3 BestBlackFriday.com
4 CreditCards.com
5 Epsilon Holiday Survey
6 Alliance Data
7 NRF “2016 Retail Holiday Planning Playbook”
Page 5 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
Fuel retailers and convenience stores will play an
important role in all of this. According to the
NACS, the association for convenience and fuel
retailing, the U.S. convenience store industry has
154,000-plus stores that account for $575 billion
in sales. And here’s three major reasons why you
are an important cog in the travel-heavy, holiday
shopping machine:
Convenience Stores Offer More
Convenience: Convenience stores offer
speed of service to time-starved
consumers who want to get in and out of
the store quickly. These shoppers
recognize this channel of trade for its
convenient locations, extended hours of
operation, one-stop shopping, grab-and-
go foodservice, variety of merchandise
and fast transactions.
The convenience store industry is
America's primary source for fuel.
Overall, 80.7% of convenience stores
(124,374 total) sell motor fuels. A
reclassification of fuel locations in 2015
led to a more accurate reading on
convenience stores selling fuel. Overall,
there was a 2.5% decrease (3,214 stores)
over 2014. A majority of convenience
store growth in 2015 came from non-fuel
operations as more retailers decided to
focus on foodservice and merchandise
offerings inside their stores.
Convenience stores have an
unmatched speed of transaction: The
average time it takes a customer to walk
in, purchase an item and depart is
between 3 to 4 minutes. Here's the
breakdown: 35 seconds to walk from the
car to the store, 71 seconds to select
item(s), 42 seconds to wait in line to pay,
21 seconds to pay and 44 seconds to
leave store. (Source: NACS Speed Metrics
Research, 2002)
You’re everywhere, and you’re fast.
Will travelers do ALL of their holiday
shopping with you? It’s unlikely. Will
they do a portion of it, from an
impulsive “point of purchase” buy
to picking up beer or wine en route
to their Thanksgiving, Chanukah or
Christmas destination? It’s likely.
Page 6 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
And here’s where
you can help.
The holidays coincide with the busiest travel
season of the year (and more foot traffic in your
stores than usual):
“During the 6-day Thanksgiving travel period, the
number of long-distance trips (to and from a -
destination 50 miles or more away) increases by 54
percent, and during the Christmas/New Year’s
Holiday period the number rises by 23 percent,
compared to the average number for the
remainder of the year.”
“And although heavy media attention focuses on
crowded airports and bus and train stations on the
Wednesday before and Sunday after Thanksgiving,
when personal vehicle trips are added to the mix
the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS)
reveals that Thanksgiving Day is actually a heavier
long-distance travel day than Wednesday.”
This represents a tremendous opportunity
for you to be a resource during the holidays.
While their primary purpose for visiting your store
may be to fuel up and grab a snack, “in-store,
there’s a growing desire to surprise and delight
customers,” according to the NRF. “[F]irst and
foremost, retailers want to get the basics--
challenges such as merchandising and inventory
management--nailed down,” adds the NRF.
The converse remains true: fail to “surprise
and delight,” and fail to recognize revenue.
16% of revenue is at risk (on average) by
the retailer due to poor customer experience.
8 U.S. Department of Transportation
9 LoyaltyOne
10 PwC
11 NRF “2016 Retail Holiday Planning Playbook”
Make sure every employee is on message, and that
message is “surprise and delight.” Every answer
should be given with a smile--and for those that
can’t be immediately answered, a confident “please
wait here until I find the answer to your question”
should be delivered, with full eye contact.
Make the buying is easy--echo the
simplicity of online shopping: Used to
frictionless checkout online, customers want a
similar fast and easy checkout experience in-store.
They also want Wi-Fi access to check product
availability and prices. And knowledgeable sales
associates to help find products and explain
features.
“Smart Merchandising” is key. “Consumers
still have a solid idea of what they want when
they head to a store, but remain heavily influenced
by what they see and feel. Shoppers reported
making 43 percent of their purchase decisions
during the shopping experience.”
This is a tremendous opportunity--from
unique beers and wines near your register to
a selection of last minute “of course I brought a
gift” gift (flowers, candy) as well as a special
selection of local specialities--put these where they
can’t be ignored, and where they will catch your
clienteles’ eye.
Keep it Clean--and Keep it Available.
Particularly in regions likely to have rain or
(gasp) snow over the next month, make sure your
store is spotless--particularly at peak periods of
foot-traffic (Thanksgiving, Christmas and New
Years). If necessary, hire additional staff simply for
shelf-stocking and cleanup, and work closely with
your vendors to ensure that the most popular
items (from foodstuffs to beer and wine) are
regularly restocked.
Page 7 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
Working with GasBuddy
For the past two decades, pundits have touted “the
year of holiday e-commerce” every year. And while
this is becoming closer than ever to the truth, there
are two important facts that work in your favor:
In-store retail still matters--and no matter
how many shoppers venture online, it
always will.
Working with us, you can easily have an
online presence--and gather and respond
to real-time feedback from customers.
This year, we introduced GasBuddy
Business Pages, what some have informally
referred to as “the Yelp of the convenience
store industry.”
So with that, your store or stores are in the catbird
seat--able to take advantage of the unique benefits
offered through in-store shopping, and leverage
customer data and an online presence to ensure
customer engagement and discovery.
GasBuddy--a pioneer in crowdsourced information,
leveraging cutting-edge technology, big data and a
passionate community of over 60 million users--
has unveiled GasBuddy Business Pages, a business
intelligence tool for retailers and c-stores that helps
your organization make smarter decisions, drive
results and create a better customer experience.
Using GasBuddy Business pages, you can take a
data-driven approach to your business with
effective marketing channels, customer experience
metrics, and market trends and competitive
analysis--and provide prospective customers with a
way to learn more about your stores and offerings,
while fostering customer engagement.
Page 8 | GasBuddy 2016 | Proprietary & Confidential
Key features and benefits include:
DASHBOARD: User-friendly design lets you
manage your fuel prices, store listings, amenities
and more from one easy-to-navigate location.
STORES & GAS PRICES: Update prices, lockdown
amenities, and highlight listings with badging and
branding.
STATION ANALYTICS: Measure footfall traffic at
your locations and benchmark against nearest
competitors.
GB CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: Monitor store ratings
and reviews, sponsor gas card giveaways, create
custom challenges and re-target based on user
behavior.
COUPONS & PRICING: Access promotions
carousel, unlimited white-label coupons and in-
store deals, integrate loyalty programs and
personalized pricing.
COMPETITIVE BENCHMARKING: Performance
comparisons available by time period and
competitor, and receive daily customer ratings and
page performance updates.