Erik Gibb
shopping

I’m too old and too closeted of a fanboy to have waited in line like so many hundreds of others at any of the stores in the bay area today. But I ordered an 8GB version online last night as soon as the Apple store finished updating. Shipping in 2-4 weeks. Sigh.

I decided to hit a real store today to get one, then cancel my online order if I was successful. The Union Square store only had 4GB versions available, so I decided to wait. It’s going to be really. really. hard.

Continue reading “No iPhone goodness for me today” »

Snippets from the article:

• U.S. men are doing more and more grocery shopping but retailers are still not doing much to make the trip any more enticing
• Men do represent a large part of grocery shopping dollars and they aren’t being very well accommodated … sales are being lost
• Men have difficulty finding items, forego buying rather than risk purchasing a substitute for an item on the grocery list and hesitate to ask for help if they can’t find an item
• Unlike women, male shoppers typically focus more on convenience than price, and retailers will need to cater to that
• The Shopping Buddy, a wireless computer on shopping carts alerts shoppers to certain items they might want using information from shopper loyalty cards
• Unlike women, men tend to hone in on the specific thing they want to buy instead of surveying the entire aisle… can be a problem for manufacturers and retailers trying to promote new products
• Great at picking out the stuff that they bought before. It’s the new stuff, or something new and different that a manufacturer is trying to promote, that they have trouble with
• Men also tend to bristle at the overwhelming number of choices in grocery aisles, with the cereal aisle being one prime example
• “One guy I thought was going to have a nervous breakdown in the cereal aisle,” Putnam said, adding that this man, in his early 30s, worked the night shift as a police officer in a dicey part of town and was otherwise used to stressful situations.
• Retailers still refer to their main customer as “she,” with women still doing the majority of the family shopping, so a major overhaul of stores to make them more attractive to men is not likely.
• But food retailers in general are focusing more and more on segmentation — tailoring store offerings to shoppers most likely to shop there or that they want to attract. This strategy could attract more male shoppers.

(Read More)

Continue reading “Grocery stores are overwhelming for men, retailers piloting in-cart recommendations based on loyalty card history” »