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The frequent shoppers of the deli and bakery are almost too good to be true. They spend more time in the store, leave more cash at the checkouts, read the ads regularly, are highly responsive to impulse buying appeals, are attracted by service departments and exhibit the greatest loyalty to their primary supermarket.
All they demand is that the store lives up to their expectations, which isn't always easy. If the super fails to deliver, the shoppers' patronage can be as perishable as any product in the deli. To attract these customers and retain their loyalty, it's important for the store operator to understand their special wants and needs, their shopping eccentricities and their susceptibility to effective merchandising.
Although this may sound like a formidable assignment, it could result in a big payoff for the entire store, as well as for the service deli and bakery departments. To help retailers identify both the opportunities and potential pitfalls of this effort, this update of deli/bakery shopper demographics, attitudes and buying actions is presented by Progressive Grocer's FoodService/Supermarkets, based on nationwide consumer research by the Home Testing Institute.
Supermarkets in the Northeast were advocates of in-store service delis long before most of the country. Possibly because of this pioneering effort, that region now exceeds all others in the United States in the percentage of total shoppers who qualify as "almost always/frequent" deli customers.
The South trails the country with an average of only 30% of customers who almost always shop service delis.
The most frequent bakery customers are found in the North Central region. In both the deli and bakery, the female head of the household is the primary shopper.
The success of the promotional focus by fast-food outlets on the younger generation shows up dramatically in the scarcity of in-store deli and bakery fans among the 25 and under age group. Perhaps it's time for supermarkets to make a more aggressive attempt to attract the young, free-spending segment of the population.
Customers in the 30s age bracket re main strong supporters of both the in-store deli and bakery. While interest tapers off somewhat in the age groups from 40 to 64, the over-65 shoppers appear to find the deli, and particularly the bakery, very much...