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08.16.2002

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NATURAL SENSIBILITY

Wellness Myth #1: Retailers Already Know and Understand the Wellness Market

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Store Within A Store: consumer-driven Solutions - Part Two

The debate continues over whether or not wellness products should be integrated or segregated into the main aisles of retail stores (see last week's issue). In order to fully address this issue, we must first stop looking at it as solely an operational concern and start thinking about it from the consumer perspective.

The most important aspect of listening to the consumer is to fully understand that consumers are different. The Hartman Group looks at the wellness from a world perspective, with less involved consumers residing out in the periphery and more involved consumers in the core. In between the two lies the vast majority of today's shoppers, who we call the mid-level.

With this in mind, from our thousands of hours of ethnographic interviews with consumers at all levels of wellness involvement, we've compiled this collection of how consumers would like to encounter wellness products and services in a retail setting. Here's what they have to say:

Awareness

Female, Core Wellness Consumer: [The store] should mix in their natural, organic-type foods with everything else. That's why it's so expensive to buy this stuff right now, because people aren't buying it. Because it's all stuck in a corner somewhere. Because if you didn't know about this stuff, why would you ever go over to this little corner of the store and shop there.

Female, Periphery Wellness Consumer: There is one small section of snack items that's organic with chips and pretzels and that sort of thing, a small area. Beyond that I've never noticed anything...I go by it just as a course of going down the aisle, and I pick items up from there, but it's not a place I make it a point of going.

Choice

Female, Periphery Wellness Consumer: I think that [integrating products] would be interesting too. Probably just for comparison too, for somebody to say, maybe this one's prettier, but I know this one doesn't have any pesticides on it, it wasn't sprayed with fertilizer and all this stuff. To be able to do a comparison side by side.

Female, Core Wellness Consumer: It would be nice to go to one store and buy all the stuff that I wanted, and I didn't have to worry about anything else, but I can't. I have to go to several different stores. But if you're just a regular mainstream person, you can go to any store and get that, but I can't. So I think it would be better if we all could have choices. Instead of me having to drive to 87 places.

Convenience

Female, Periphery Consumer: It's too much to go in there [natural section of supermarket]. The wood floors and shelves, I mean, come on! It seems like we're paying more for natural foods so that they can pay for the fancy setup. Why not just put everything together? Would make things a lot easier and maybe cost less.

Male, Mid-Level Wellness Consumer: It depends on if I'm power shopping or not...kind of run in, I need to get this, this and this, and then I have to leave, it's easier when it's right there. QFC has a nice organic vegetable section, they also put most of the organic stuff together so you can find it.

Perception

Female, Periphery Wellness Consumer: I don't understand why they insist on putting the organic stuff in a different section of the store. I feel like everyone is looking at me weird when I shop over there, like I'm a freak. I just want the milk by the milk and the yogurt by the yogurt."

Experience

Female, Mid-Level Wellness Consumer: I think they'd have to have an aisle or half an aisle that would be devoted just to health products. If [the grocery store] introduced a section, gave out little flyers, little TV promotion, we're going to have this section and maybe give some examples of things they're going to have, I would be more prone to look there...So maybe their diet food, their vitamins, whatever has to do with being more healthy, all that would be in one section or one area of the store. And maybe a person that could help you even. If that were possible.

Female, Periphery Wellness Consumer: I suppose it would probably be a person standing there that would get my attention more than anything. That's how at Costco when they have people doing the demonstrations, I usually end up buying what they're demoing because my kids like it, or they hate it, and then I know not to buy it...but I don't think I'd take the time to read something.

Conclusion

Clearly, there is no one answer to the long-debated store-within-a-store dilemma. Though the store-within-a-store concept may work from some retailers, don't assume that by including this one element in your store layout you've addressed the issue of wellness and checked it off your list. The key is to know your store and to know your customer. In the eyes of the consumer, just as a Whole Foods Market would not become a Safeway simply by cutting prices, a Safeway will not become a Whole Foods Market simply by adding a store-within-a-store. Nor should either retailer try. Understanding and staying true to what you've developed as a brand over time is essential when addressing any consumer experience.

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Click here for PART ONE: Store Within a Store

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