MAKING RELEVANCY PART OF YOUR BRAND

August 9, 2017

Today’s retailers are challenged to keep up with constant changes in emerging technology, competition and shopper behavior. But what exactly does staying relevant mean, and where do you start?

Doug Fritsch, senior vice president of retail and business development at Independent Grocers Alliance (IGA), gives his insights on that very question. Fritsch, who offers a unique perspective as someone who is not a current member of CCRRC North America, explained that relevancy is highly important to IGA, an organization made up of about 700 small operators and the wholesalers that serve them.

“IGA’s role [is] to try to help retailers understand how much the world is changing and how the shopper is now engaging in different ways, so the idea of relevancy hits our retailers in multiple ways,” Fritsch says.

The self-diagnostic tool in CCRRC’s newest report, “Surviving the Brave New World of Food Retailing,” piqued his interest because it was a resource he, his team and retailers could use to understand how they were performing and what more they could do to remain relevant.

“We found ourselves on a rating scale coming in fairly low…certainly in the area of digital,” he says. “We also felt that based on the diagnostic, some of the things we are doing were validated.”

Fritsch says the tool is beneficial for retailers to use individually, explaining that it helped IGA take a step back, look at their own brand and try to bring more clarity to it – particularly with how shoppers see the brand and how they would like shoppers to see the brand.

The report can be accessed for free here, and the podcast is available for listening and downloading below.