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Richard J. George, Ph.D.'s RetailWire Blog


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Richard J. George, Ph.D.
Professor of Food Marketing
Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph's University
January 29, 2010
While I tend to agree with most of the noted trends, I still struggle with the notion of customer loyalty. Customers can be loyal to their families, church, alma mater, etc. But using the term customer loyalty when interacting with marketers makes little sense to me. For ...
January 22, 2010
I believe the key to Target's success (short and long term) is in the nature of its food offerings. Everyone is selling food because of its traffic building nature. The Walmart model of selling food as a break-even to generate more profitable non-food sales has worked well. ...
January 18, 2010
Certainly this is not a unique concept, namely fresh prepared, convenient meals. Walgreen needs to answer the following questions:1. Can Walgreens do it? That is, can the company make or buy and merchandise/promote fresh-prepared meals? It appears that conversations with noted food manufacturers will address the make ...
January 15, 2010
I think this is less about consumer learning and more about consumer sales. With SKU reductions, payment on scan, more private label, and other plans of traditional retailers that will limit the effectiveness and efficiencies of national brands, P&G appears to be testing the waters for offering its own ...
January 14, 2010
Absolutely! The number of farmers' markets grew from 1,755 in 1994 to 4,685 in 2008. In recent research which I conducted for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, respondents chose farmer's market products for the following reasons:Fresher productsSupports the local economyYou know the sourceYou know what you are gettingHigh ...
December 29, 2009
I would argue with the premise that "consumers killed customer service." Consumers have always demanded a reason to shop at one retailer versus another. When retailers stopped providing any modicum of customer service, consumers responded by simply demanding a better price. In essence, she said, "If you ...
December 22, 2009
There are no average customers. If there were average customers we never would have witnessed the exponential growth of current main line businesses such as FedEx, Amazon, eBay, and others, who began as niche businesses that analyzed the potential markets beyond simple averages or generalities.As I have noted in ...
December 17, 2009
Technological investments are key to any organization but particularly to retailers looking to position themselves for the expected rebound. While social network participation is an immediate requirement, in the long run mobile apps appear to be the best potential investment. Amazon's m-commerce site is almost ten years old ...
December 8, 2009
First, let's call them what they really are, "frequency of purchase" cards. Very little loyalty is generated by cards that simply give discounts and are carried by most shoppers for the variety of food retailers that they shop. Second, if this is to be different than most "loyalty ...
December 4, 2009
There is no doubt that consumers are recalibrating, focusing more on value as well as values. On the value side, if consumers perceive themselves as richer because they are not paying the associated credit card fees and monthly interest charges, then the switch could be potentially positive. Similarly, ...
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