Roamler: The Best Tool To Get Point Of Sales Pics

I recently discovered Roamler. Roamler is a tool which allows suppliers or retailers to get pictures and information about execution in point of sales.

Roamler empower regular people with an application. The application proposes them to do some missions in store, such as taking a picture of a promotion, or to see the prices, and reward them with cash.

A lot of applications have developped in this area, and I remember to see some couple of years ago. But what I like about Roamler is the kind of results they are able to have. See below in a single week all the different pictures they are able to get.

In the retail world, we have the chances to see on a constant basis some great stuffs happening in the store around the corner. Roamler allows your company either a retailer or a supplier to see what is going on.

Brand Application Case Study: How Milka The Most Downloaded App of The AppleF Store

It is pretty rare to see a brand application experiencing a tremendous success. So tremendous it allowed the application to be listed the most downloaded application of the Apple Store.

The Milka Application's results:

Ranked n°1 of the Apple Store

Over 1 million downloads in France

16 millions games played

What made this application's remarkable success? Probably the fact that it allowed players to play with multiple phones to add fun and to share the game. 

The application has been supported by viral marketing campaigns, with Youtube videos. It also was helped by a TV commercial campaign.  Now it will be interesting to see if Milka is able to keep on the success as long as possible.

What Will Be Next Retailer's Largest Market?

Western retailers including companies such as Walmart, Carrefour, Auchan, Casino (yes 3 French companies that thrive abroad, cocorico), Tesco or Costco are looming on new markets to develop in order to maintain high growth rates. 

A lot of them have bet on China, and they bet right. Indeed, China will soon become the largest retail market in the world. China has allowed international retailers to grow fast while their domestic market was remaining steady. And despite the last years issues, like higher legislation and slower growth, China is still a great market for the years ahead. 

There are still a lot of room for opening new stores, launching new categories and innovations. 

But now, what will be the next markets? Indeed, India has a great potential but has been struggling with its politics, which cooled off most of retailers. Philippines, which is also one of the most populated country, has also been a question, mostly due to its corruption. This is the reason why Carrefour took off not so long ago. 

But the next real playground to those retailers will be the digital one. For sure, retailers will invest hard online, and this is a matter of time when Carrefour, Walmart or Tesco will make a significant move online. And this will be an interesting story to follow.

Retailing: Working With The Customer Lifetime Value

The Customer Lifetime Value is a key component of the whole customer relationship management concept. The main idea is that a customer value increase with the time it stays a customer. The longer the relationship go, the more sales and benefits you get.

It is difficult though to have clear data explaining the facts. Here I found, a great chart in an article about loyalty program in retailing. It shows how the profit per customers evolve through the time. It shows well the benefit to think about the customer life cycle. 

You can clearly see that the profits increase with the time dramatically. Therefore, you should pay attention to how you deal with your customers depending on if he is a prospect, a regular, or a loyal customer.

Source: Harvard Business School Working Knowledge

Book Review: The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

It has been a while I have started to read this book, but never really finished it. I ended last week the reading of the book. The concept of the book is to explain all the different component of choice making, and also to see how our new world, where we have more and more choice, is actually making it more difficult to choose.

Indeed, the more the options you have, the harder the decision will be, and higher the percentage of chances of regrets you may get from not selecting the other solutions. 

As I have said several times on this blog, my classes in Oswego about Customer behavior, and the shopper's decision making process where key in my will to work in the marketing and customer relationship management part. Therefore I found in this book a lot of components of what I learned at that time.

It is difficult to give you in a single blog post all the interesting insights of the book, but in overall, it is quite fast to read, and well documented with a lot of examples. What is also great about the book, it is that they give you the good process in decision making you should implement in order to make the right decisions.

In our nowadays society where information is everywhere, and the options so numerous, decision making is one of the master key to succeed in life. Therefore, you should have a look at the book, that explains clearly what to take into consideration and when.

Here is a great video showing you some of the enlightment I found in the book, held at a Ted event.

Supply Chain As One Of The Key For Brick&Mortar Online Strategy

As I have said, 2015 will be the year of a great online confrontation between pure players like Amazon and brick&mortar competitors, like Carrefour or Walmart. If Amazon master the online playground, and large marketshares which will be difficult to earn, brick&mortar owns a large store network to organize click&collect. 

Nevertheless, one of the key factor of success of Amazon is its inventory management. It masters the information of product availability in order to provide higher customer service. I read an interesting article about supply chain on this topic. 

What the article highlight is that the fact for a retailer to have a complete visibility of its inventory both online and offline, at all time, is a key to its online success. It is easier said than done though: The compatibility and the merger between both the online supply chain and the off line one is far from being achived.

39% of retailers say they have a synchronization of both channels. 44% of the retailers which responded to the study say they can't synchronize both, and 42% of them don't have a complete vision of its customers between both channels.

One of the key to brick&mortar strategy to go online is this information system synchronization and more flexibility in its supply chain. 

CRM in Retail: Target and Whole Food Market Testing New Loyalty Reward Programs

Loyalty progam has been existing for quite a while in the retail business. Some companies, especially Tesco, have thriven to use customer data to propose customized coupons and discounts, in order to reach customer loyalty.

Two US retailers have recently tested some new loyalty reward programs: Target and Whole Food Markets.

Both of the companies have points based loyalty programs. The particularity of points based is that it bases its value on points rather than cash. The good thing about such programs is that it allows to go beyond the cashback concepts, and propose some rewards that may be for example for Whole Food Markets some cooking classes. The bad thing is that it is harder for customers to see the generosity rate of the program, and hence the benefits of it.

Nevertheless, as both retailers are trying to add added value beyond the discount concept, it may be a good strategy. 

Both obviously set their strategy online, and using mobile devices. 

Now, it is difficult for fast moving goods retailers to have a strong customer experience via a loyalty reward programs. Indeed, the loyalty programs allow to have massive customer data, but it is difficult to have a clear added value to the relationship when you have discount products bought every week.

We will see what kind of results both retailers will have from these initiatives.

Walmart and Its Relationship With Suppliers

Walmart is by far the largest retailer in the world. It has based its supremacy first by dominating small US markets where large retailers at the time did not want to invest, but then developped main assets such as a strong supply chain management thanks to information system, a highly effectif approach of category management and cost killing, and then a strong power of negociation.

I read a very detailed and interesting post of the Fast Company about the relationship Walmart has with its supplier. Obviously, it pictures an oger willing to eat of its supplier. I don't really want to take side in this article as I am part of the trade, but obviously, you can see why it really matters to have great relationship between a retailer and its suppliers. The reason why I share with you this article is that it is difficult to find information on how Walmart proceed in terms of negociation, and it may be by far the most documented article I found.

It highlights there are positive aspects about having Walmart as a client:

- The raise of sales, and market shares

- The ability to reach by far the largest number of people on the planet

- The ability to be leaner and more efficient as a supplier, by killing costs wherever they are

And some side effects:

- Lowering the % of margin and earning market shares at Walmart also implies less margin at its competitors

- It may have a social impact as some suppliers have hard time keeping on the pace.

How The Fnac Succeeded by Embracing Multi Channel Retailing

Radio Classique had a very interesting radio show on February the 28th about the Fnac and how the retailer succeeded to transform itself to thrive in the new high tech world. 

Indeed, the Fnac had to face the very same challenges both electronics and cultural goods retailer had to face. The challenges that made companies like Barnes & Nobles or Radio Shack hit the grown lately.

Indeed, the concept of Fnac is to spread culture both by medium (show tickets, but also TV, radio, PCs, cameras...) and by art itself (CDs, books, DVDs, Video Games, etc...). When both of those categories where hitted hard by Ecommerce, a lot of people were questionning how the retailer could compete with its new environment. 

Indeed, it seemed difficult to compete with Emerchants, who were able to have large product range, aggressive pricing, and foremost could deliver customers home.

After 4 consecutive years of declining sales, the Fnac delivered a 41 millions € profit. 

How Did The Fnac Managed To Overcome Those Challenges?

As the narrator says, the fnac has set up a strategy and was able to implement it successfully, which is easier said than done. It succeeded in blending its brick & mortar retail network and its Ecommerce website to secure a smooth customer experience. And it was difficult. I remember when I used to work at the Fnac back in 2005, the after sales service used not to deal with goods bought online, as it was an activity which did not come from the store (it seems ackward, but trust me, still nowadays, a lot of store networks react like that). Both the Ecommerce and the brick & mortar departments were at war.

The store people are now incentived on the online results, which helped people to understand the interest to have a strong online presence. Hence, retailers should understand and embrace the transformation of commerce, and not try to hide it by giving to retail network goals that are inachievable as they don't take into consideration the rise of online purchasing.

As Georges Plassat of Carrefour says, brick &  mortar retailers have an edge on Ecommerce companies: they own a store netwok.

One of the other key factor of success is its brand equity, which relies on a high shopping experience, with a strong loyalty reward programs, which people appreciate.

The Fnac should be considered as a modell worldwide of an electronic goods retailer which thrive during the e-commerce era.

How To Leverage Pricing To Achieve Long Term Growth

Once again, I discuss a lot in this blog about pricing. But pricing is a key elements in our modern retailing world. 

Consulting firm McKinsey delivered a great article giving some key factors of success of a good pricing strategy. What the article outlines, is also how a good pricing strategy can secure long lasting results.

1. Provide meaningful transparency into pricing data

The pricer position has blossomed in France in most of the retail companies. It is a new job, with clear goals, but which needs to create its own strategy as it is new. As a matter of fact, what is difficult for a pricer is that it needs clear visibility of all the components that will impact both the pricing and the profitability of one product. If the pricer don't have a clear view of what are the operationnal costs for example, it will be tough to achieve profitability goals through pricing.

What makes it worse, is that most of the time the information exists. And actually it exists in bulk:

 But the very proliferation and complexity of data have more often than not overwhelmed rather than helped. As a consequence, advanced pricing analytics are often ignored in favor of pricing decisions based on gut feeling, a one-size-fits-all model, past experience, or outdated analysis. The result is that either companies price too low and leave money on the table, or they price too high and lose customers.

By having a comprehensive analytic tools, you may be able to have differenciate price strategy based on customers' willingness to pay. In this chart below for example, you may see that depending on the elasticity of the discounts, you may get a cluster of customers to propose appropriate pricing.

2. Understand what customers really value

This is what will allow you to propose pricing based on the facial value rather than on your competition's pricing, and/or your costs. It is easier said than done. But based on a clear analysis of what customers value in their shopping experience, it will allow your company to understand better what will create the best added value, and therefore reinforce the value of one product. 

At one company, a team of pricing and sales managers was asked to list the factors it thought determined the prices that customers were paying. It then tested and refined these hypotheses. The analysis revealed 14 significant drivers of pricing sensitivity that the sales reps had not identified, many of them counterintuitive. In one case, for instance, it was the quality of the packaging rather than the quality of the product that was the single most important driver for customers’ willingness to pay a premium.

A pragmatic approach to value pricing is “next-best-alternative pricing.” This method involves researching what alternatives customers have to the company’s product or service. Best-practice companies go further and make the next-best-alternative approach a mandatory team practice. Teams discuss the cases and role-play negotiations. Creating a database of next-best-alternative cases can also help disseminate the new pricing knowledge.

I believe this concept of the "Next best alternative" approach should be the subject of a soon to come blog post.

3. Move from sales reps to ‘value negotiators’

This is something very important. Indeed, as much effort you may put to set up the best pricing strategy, commerce remains full of human factors. Giving the ability to salesforce to negociate the price is the best way to match customers needs. I have discussed a lot in this blog of how important salesforce empowerment is key to CRM. in pricing it is also the case. 

4. Provide on-the-job training to build confidence

5. Change the culture

Those two last ones to me are the same: If you really want pricing strategy to be one of the core elements of your business, and as it is relatively new, you must be able to develop a culture, teach people. This is what we call the change management. And in our nowadays world where trades and positions are changing constantly, it really matters to coach, give education, and give sens to what one pricing strategy is all about.

Why Ecommerce Startups Are Looming On Retail

Very interesting article of Techcrunch, explainig why Ecommerce Start Ups Are Bullish On Retail. This is a topic we will see more and more now coming up. Indeed, Ecommerce is maturing, the growth rate is slowing down, you can clearly see now mergers and concentration coming up. Meanwhile, brick & mortar businesses are investing more and more on the web, to find new land of growth. These two strategies are forcing Ecommerce companies to launch some store networks.

Obviously, traditionnal retailers have an hedge on this one, as it takes time and some kind of expertise to launch a vast store network. Nevertheless, the article emphasizes on the advantages that Ecommerce start ups have on their competition:

• They can negociate more flexible real estate lease: Now that comemrcial real estate is struggling, landlords tend to give short term leases, allowing Emerchants to test new concepts without much risks.
• They master better their inventory: it is probably easier to master brick & mortar inventory once you have a clear inventory online, than the other. Their ability to work with modern tools their inventory allows to cut off some costs.
• A retail networks allow to cut off some of the shipping costs: Obviously, it changes the way they work their business modell, and their ability to work with the brick & mortar operationnal costs (especially wadges) will be a key to the success of their retail network
• They may propose a more customized customer relationship management. Ecommerce has thrived on customer data, and their ability to do it better than brick & mortar companies will be a key to beat the competition.

Now, the article is obviously one sided. Developping a retail network is a hard task to undertake. Moreover, it requires large investments in order to have a clear impact on the Emerchant revenues.

Nevertheless, I really like the way the article shows out that E commerce may really change the way we shop.

Why I dislike When People Talks About How The US Are In Advanced Compare To Europe

I was recently participating to a conference about retailing and new technologies. In the assistance, there was a lot of marketing managers, CEO of advertising companies, and expert about new technologies and retail. During the introducing talk, the host talked about how the US were in advanced on some retail technologies.

My post is not about this specific event. It is about the fact that in France, but also in Europe, people tends to believe that the United States are way in advanced on most business topics. They have more developped technologies, better case studies, and it sounds as they outcast the European competition.

But I really don't believe in it. Obviously, the United States is one of the best country in the world for business. It embraces innovation as no other country do, which allow them to go fast and to test new technologies fast. But on the other hand, a lot of things need to be taught by Europeans.

Indeed, let's speak about retailing. Obviously, you may find more case studies about companies testing Ibeacons and multichannel retailing in the US than in France. But in terms of retailing, we are one of the finest country in the world. We have strong concept that we have launched abroad, like Carrefour, Decathlon, La Fnac, or Picard, among others. Actually, French retailers experience more success abroad that American's ones. Cdiscount is obviously one of the hardest local competition Amazon has to fight against. Galleries Lafayettes has been recently awarded the Internatonal Retail Award 2015. 

We have a real and strong know how we should be proud of.

In terms of innovation, indeed, we may have less case studies, we may go slower, but France is a wonderful land of innovation. The Drive thru concept was born in France and experience a massive success. Let's not forget that Sam Walton had the idea of its Supercenter by visiting Carrefour. 

 This is actually what this blog is about and the reason why I write in English: showing to the world how good France and French concepts can be. 

I believe the good mindset should be to see how we can innovate, how we can go beyond what people do right now, rather than focusing on what the others do. And maybe people would talk less about a fake difference there would be in quality between Europe and the US.

Insights About Walmart's Strategy and How It Impacts Its Categories

A great article as I like them. Factual, well documented, which gives us a lot of food for thoughts. I use more and more the retail section of Forbes to write some of my blog posts as I find them very well written.

In this article, Forbes explain how Walmart's category strategy has evolved over times, to shift from general merchandises to grocery business.

Here is a chart below that explains well this fact.

This strategy allowed Walmart to secure more frequent visit, and added sales. But what I am questionning myself is that grocery business usually provides less margin rates than other products. Hence, the rise of grocery shopping may have an impact on the overal margins of Walmart. Nevertheless, another key change may have been that with the rise of grocery, Walmart was also able to improve its operational efficiency and costs. It would be interesting to see how this move have impacted the profitability of the company.

What is interesting in the article, is how this fact is related to clothing apparel chain Kohl's data. Indeed, as you can see in this chart, the growth of the penetration rate of Kohl's has rised almost proportionnaly than the decline of Walmart.

Is there hence a direct correlation between those two facts? Well, obviously, if Walmart loses some customers, that means the competition is benefiting from it. Now the article says that Walmart "gives a $7 billion "Gift" to Kohl's,", and I believe it is a bit overrated. Indeed, as most of retailers, when you have such a dramatic change in your category strategy, you will have a deep impact in your historical categories. Nevertheless, Walmart has not decided neither have stopped to compete in this market.

What is sure though, is that Walmart needs to improve its shopping experience and its customer relationship management strategy on its clothing categories. I agree with the article that low prices on clothing items may not be enough anylonguer to secure market shares.

On the other hand, Walmart can't go too far from its original concept: I don't think customers would understand a shift in their everyday low price strategy even though on some specific categories it would help selling better. But this article outlines clearly a key category management issue that Walmart is facing, and a large opportunities to develop sales on the long term for Walmart.

CVS Abandonning Categories To Mark Strategic Changes

The year has already started, but I wanted to share with you some insights I  found on Retail Dive on the retailers you should look at in 2015.

One of the trend I would really like to look at is CVS Health move to abandon the distribution of tabacco in its stores. The retailer used to count on $2  billion thanks to this category. But they have decided to stop it in an effort to change the position of its store, and to set its chain as the leader of health retailing.

Indeed, it is difficult to claim you are working on health products if you sell cigarettes. But what I like about this move is the retailer is eager to quit one profitable category in order to have a comprehensive shopping experience and have a clear position in the market. Retail marketing is a difficult trade, and it will be interesting to see the results both in terms of store concept and in sales.

Here is a video of CVS CEO discussing about the topic. I like the way he emphasizes the long term benefits for CVS businesses of this move.

The Component of The Successful #Pricing Strategy Of #Auchan

Auchan is to me one of the retailer that understand better how to work on pricing. Indeed, even though in France Auchan is far from being the best in the price competition charts, it has developped some skills on how to communicate on price, and therefore, have a strong price image. 

As a result, as shown in this blog previously, Auchan is one of the retailer that has the best gap between their actual price and the image shoppers have (see chart below).

What are the key components of Auchan's pricing strategy?

The Corner Of Fruits and Veggies for less than 1€

It has been several years now that Auchan has a corner with a selection of products for less than 1 €, which is quite successful. It secures then the lowest price to customers, and is theatralized in store as shown below. Now Auchan also has a corner of meat for less than 1 € the piece.

Theatralization of the Promotions

Auchan has always been the king of promotion thanks to its big stores and large aisles. It knows how to communicate on those both in stores and out stores. Here is a great example.

 

Work the Pricing Consistency

Pricing is most of the time getting crazy for FMCG products. Indeed, in order to compete with other retailers, most of the time pricers lower the prices of the most sold products. The problem is that most of the time it creates gaps in the very same product range, which is totally not understandable for one customer: How could a vanilla yoghurt be 20% cheaper than the pisctacio's one?

This is the reason why Auchan is working on some categories to harmonize the product range and therefore have a consistent pricing strategy, which makes sense to the customers.

They open Shop in Shop Hard Discount Stores

Even though it is not my favorite move, while the hard discount chains were rising in France, Auchan made the decisions to open "Self Discount" shops in shops, which were full hard discount stores inside the stores.

What I dislike about this one is that it takes a lot of room, and most of the time, it doubles cheap SKUs, which is to me a bargain for sales/square meters.

Offering Discounts On Premium Categories, like Organic Goods

It is also the roles of discount chains to find new markets to lower the price. And Auchan has set up a communication with products lower than 1 € for organic foods. Moreover, they propose self service products in stack, in order to allow people to save on packaging and get the right quantitites they want.

There maybe more components that I have not noticed, but obviously, they work really well on their image without investing really on price. 

What is great about the strategy is that they work on an understanding for the customers pricing strategy, and this is the reason why it works.

How Retailers Can Kick Their Supply Chain Up A Notch

A quick link to an interesting article about what to secure for a retailer in terms of supply chain. 

Supply chain is not one of the topic I discuss the most in this blog, as I am focusing more on Customer Relationship Management, Marketing, Management or Retail Strategy. But probably I should more. Indeed, a strong supply chain secures you the availability of your products, which is key in customer satisfaction.

What the article emphasize the most, especially for holliday season, is how you should secure the availability of your products. In a purchasing strategy, it is also key: Even before having the best price, you should make sure that you will get your products.

My Feedback About l'Hyperduel on France 5

As I have advertized earlier this week, French channel France 5 was broadcasting yesterday "L'hyperduel", the story of the business fight Edouard Leclerc (E. Leclerc) and Marcel Fournier (Carrefour) undertook together. The TV Show is available in French here for only 6 days. 

Why did I switch for English? Because I believe this story goes by far out of the French market. Those two people had clearly changed the way retailing is. Especially obviously through Carrefour which is one of the most international retailer in the world. 

The show was great, and despite my extensive knowledge on the topic, I found very good information that I did not know of.

What I highly appreciated was the mention of Bernardo Trujillo, the wizzard of discount retailing. I am actually waiting for a great biographic that does not seem to exist yet.

What I wanted to highlight in this video, beyond the two different characters, were their vision of discounting and modern commerce.

• Edouard Leclerc believed in cutting intermediaries in order to save some bucks and to give it back to customers. It was his core plan, and actually, he wanted to keep the business that way. It allowed him to buy cheaper, and therefore to have competitive pricing.
• Marcel Fournier believed in having wide product ranges and large stores, in order to lower the price of good sold, and hence to be more efficient in the operations, to sell lower. This is the reason why he embraces supermarket and self service.

What is interesting, is that the best retailers of our modern times have been able to mix both: Cut intermediaries and buy better, cheaper, and to lower their operating costs, to remain lean.

Great piece of work.

Duels : Edouard Leclerc / Marcel Fournier, l... par france5

Some Thoughts About L'Oréal Opening Its Own Store Chain

L'Oréal Paris has opened recently its 4th store in Europe, in Milan. It is the elenth in the world. Despite the fact L'Oréal Paris said it does not want to open a retail network, it has been 2 years now that it launches stores. Probably the idea is to have flagship stores, that will allow to strengthen the brand experience, and to master its customer experience. But indeed it is not clear to see the real reason of those stores opening.

Indeed, retailing is a real trade. Not anyone can do it. Not even if they own a strong brand. Hence, the L'Oréal Group has already had previous difficult experiences with retailing. One on the Internet, with the shut down of "Les Créateurs de beauté", whereas at the same time the cosmetic market on the Internet was booming. The second one, with their purchase of "The Body Shop", which has been struggling to expand and grow as it was planned.

Especially, the retail industry don't have the same financial ratio than cosmetics companies have, and their wake EBIT rate may turn down l'Oréal to pursure the experience. Hence, it will be interesting to see how l'Oréal go on with its strategy.

Demain, Jeudi 5 Mars: l'Hyperduel sur France 5

Duels : Edouard Leclerc / Marcel Fournier, l... par france5

Une vidéo racontant le premier affrontement entre Marcel Fournier et Edouard Leclerc. En attendant la suite demain, sur France 5 à 9h30.

Intermarché Tests NFC Pricetags For Self Scanning System

Thierry Cotillard, Chief Executive of Sales of Intermarché, has recently opened a new supermarket at Issy les Moulineaux, in the suburb of Paris. If you are based in France and/or Paris, I believe you should have a look at the store. Because Intermarché has been one of the most performing retailer in France, because Thierry Cotillard is a highly skilled merchant, and because this store has a lot of innovation, including NFC tags that allows shoppers to scan their products with their mobile phone before paying it.

 The solution tested also allow the ability to provide coupons customized either when the customer enter the shop, or when they scan an article (in the video, when the person scans Barilla Pasta, it proposes the sauce of the same brand).

Technology will be more and more common in stores, to provide extensive shopping experience, with Ibeacons and NFCs technology. All linked to mobile.

Also, the store propose a joint venture with Columbus Café, a little bit as you may find in Barnes and Noble with Starbucks.

Despite the small space (1000 square meters), the store propose a lot of innovations.

As I have already said in this blog, France is a land of retailing, and Intermarché proves it.

Visit Of Thierry Cotillard's New Intermarché Store

Thierry Cotillard is the chief of sales of Intermarché. But as Intermarché is a group of independent retailers, Thierry Cotillard owns two stores in the suburb of Paris. He recently opened its second store, and I was eager to visit it as I heard it was great. Indeed, this new store has been set with the new store concept of Intermarché. Moreover, it is a "Intermarché Express", which is one of the new format the company is willing to develop in the next few years. I must admit it is a beautiful store, with a lot of innovations. So I am going to turn a bit like Olivier Dauvers, and introduce you to this new concept!

The store shows off the "Producteur Commerçant" banner. Indeed, Intermarché owns some factories and hence produce some of the products it sells. This is one of the difference it has with its competition. And in the new concept, Intermarché wants to advertize this fact.

Intermarché has a very innovative new application, allowing to scan on the go the products thanks to NFC price tags. Once you enter the parking lot, it tells you how to download the app and how to use it.

Despite the fact the store is a small convenience store in a "hipster" neighbourhood, in the DNA of Intermarché is low price. Therefore, Intermarché guarantee the lowest price of the area.

 The fruits and veggies are disposed at the entrance, to focus on the freshness of the products.

The store proposes to place its fruits in carb bags instead of plastic ones. To be honest, I am not really fan of thoses, especially when it is to get large quantities.

 The whole store is equipped with electronic price tags, with clear font and background.

 The cheese section, with a nice specific display. You can clearly see how the store uses different display furnitures to make the merchandise stand out.

The store had a Barilla's pasta bar, which allows to taste pasta with sauce. The store indeed has some room saved for specific animations. The Barilla's one was very good, and very well done.

 The store, despite its small size, and in order to boost lunch sales, has a Columbus Café inside the store (a Starbucks like concept). These kind of shop in stores are pretty familliar in the US, but brand new in France. It gives another example of how the store innovates.

Another inovative display, perfect for such small stores. The store is very merchant with a lot of displays like this one.

Once again, an innovation: Despite the small size of the store, this chicken roasting machine gives a taste to the freshness of the product.

Here is another example of how the store is not giving up any sales potential despite the size: This Pampers display shows how they can work on promotions.

 Here is something I have been working on at Intermarché: Those small displays are meant to shows the new products of the cosmetic department.

Here is another very innovative display to stand the premium perfume section out.

The store is working around corners to stand out some categories. Here, the wine section has specific furniture once again, and is worked as a small shop in shop.

 Here is the promotion section.

The store has set some doors for its cold section. What is interesting, is that it used doors for most of the cold products but for the yoghurt one... I would be interested to know why.

Leclerc - Fournier : L' Hyper Duel

A ne pas manquer cette semaine, sur France 5, un documentaire inédit sur 2 personnalités qui ont marqué l'histoire de la grande distributino. Edouard Leclerc, fondateur des centres E Leclerc, et Marcel Fournier, fondateur de Carrefour. Les 2 personnalités ont tous deux révolutionnés le commerce français, l'un en popularisant le discount, l'autre en créant l'hypermarché. Les 2 étaient des entrepreneurs, mais avec des visions très différentes de leurs missions, et de la manière de conduire leurs activités. Déjà, dans l'excellent livre d'Yves Soulabail, auteur du blog Carrefour un combat pour la liberté, il est fait état à un duel radiophonique entre les 2 dirigeants lors de la sortie des produits blancs chez Carrefour. 

Un documentaire à voir absolument.