Duty manager: Karl Money
Store: Morrisons, Swansea
Opened: 2004
Size: 43,000 sq ft
Market share: 6.9%
Population: 215,738
Grocery spend: £5,326,457.61
Spend by household: £55.27
Competitors: 43
Nearest rivals: Aldi 1.5 miles, Asda 1.5 miles, Co-op 2 miles, Iceland 1 mile, Lidl 1.4 miles, M&S 1.7 miles, Morrisons 1.5 miles, Sainsbury’s 1.7 miles, Tesco 1.1 miles, Waitrose 24 miles
Source: CACI. For more info visit www.caci.co.uk/contact. Notes: Shopper profiling is measured using Grocery Acorn shopper segmentation. Store catchment data (market share, population, expenditure, spend by household, competition) is within a five-mile radius. For CACI’s shopper segmentation of the other stores we visited this week see the online report at www.thegrocer.co.uk/stores/the-grocer-33
What’s unique about this Morrisons store? This is a training store for the South Wales and Somerset region. It means that any external recruits at manager level and above come here for all their technical training and get to spend time with experienced managers. We have just under 200 full-time colleagues. The store is close to the Swansea City FC stadium, on a retail park just over a mile from the town centre. We’re also close to Swansea University, so we get a mix of demographics coming into the store. Our café can get extremely busy on football days.
What feedback have you had from the monthly customer roundtables? There’s been lots. One is lighting – we turned the spotlights back on to make the store more inviting. Other standout feedback has been about cash and card self-scan checkouts. Lots of customers wanted to use cash at self-scan checkouts, but we only had four for cash. We’ve now removed the card only, and doubled the number of cash and card checkouts in the store. The business has responded very well to feedback – be that rolling out a new line or offer, or making other changes. It’s allowed us to respond well to customer needs in store.
Have there been any other changes in store recently? As a business we’ve shifted a lot in responding to our customers and giving them more reasons to shop at Morrisons. The feel of the stores is very good. As of late we’ve put more seating into stores, and a new style of trolleys, including kids’ trolleys, kid-friendly checkouts and a reading station in the café. We’ve now got a new offering of WIGIG offers, which really suits the demographic. Last week we had suitcases, which went down an absolute storm. It’s a new range of products, which really entices customers to come to the store. We’ve also recently begun an optics trial in store, to measure on-shelf availability.
Our mystery shopper noted how quiet the store was. There wasn’t any background music: We have a quiet hour in our store seven days a week, which allows customers who prefer shopping during those times to do so.
They were also ‘taken aback’ by the effort put into your in-store flower display: We actually reset all the plants recently as we weren’t happy with the standard and quality of the products, they were deteriorating too quickly. Our fresh manager is really passionate about it, so will be over the moon at that feedback. The business has got a plan about the range and how stores should look and feel, it’s up to us to implement that as a team. I’ve only been at this store for 14 weeks, but what I’m lucky to have is a fantastic team. The consistency of what they offer day in, day out is a blessing.
It was a warm weekend. How did you prepare in store? It’s about being dynamic to the weather. We’ve got a butchery counter in store, so we’re able to put BBQ packs together, with flavourings and a real fantastic offering. Not all our competitors have that. Then it’s those key selling areas, making sure that the frozen area is well stocked, and that the quality of the fresh fruit & veg is good. We’ve got the salad bar, which sells really well. On top of that we have a food to order system, which allows customers to order food to go, with full picnics.
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