Supermarkets, Data–mining to In–store Locations & how it can go wrong!

Tesco’s have been the trailblazers in gathering loads of data with their Clubcards and in terms of offers, coupons and promotions have over the years matched up their promotions pretty well for our household.

Morrisons is a late entry to big data with their More card.

Morrisons have also been growing their free-from, gluten free, etc. ranges.

Some time back I was looking for some ready meals for lunches when I was alone in the house. The other 2 cooks in the house produce home-cooked veggie, fish and seafood meals so I was looking for traditional meat meals whilst trying to avoid carbs that are too high GI as I have diabetes.

I spotted the Kirsty’s range that looked tasty, in Morrisons, on offer, with long fridge dates. I tried these and liked them but they were not on the ready meals section of the chilled isle when I went back to Morrisons. I did occasionally find them in Asda.

I returned to Morrisons this week and went around a different way to spot the fridges in their ‘free-from’ isle. And there I found the missing Kirstys range.

I paid, also useing my More card, and by the time I got home, I found an email expounding the growth of their ‘free-from’ range. Their algorithm assumed wrongly that the purchase was to avoid gluten etc. This ignored the stronger signal that every time we shopped in Morrisons we bought their wheat, spelt and rye bread.

They are also missing the point that this range are also ‘an interesting alternative’ and potential sales to folk who do not routinely need to go down the ‘free-from’ isle.

In fact supermarkets, including Morrisons, are placing the same products in more than one location to suggest combinations and to increase sales. Waitrose are the most enthusiastic at this. However, in their small Sandbach store I was frustrated when failing to find their garlic prawn kebabs after looking in 3 places where fresh prawns were displayed. I eventually found them in the fourth!

Robert McGonigle : 25 Feb 2017 19:17 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem