Don’t neglect your core customer

I am interested to see the heavyweight campaign launched by Waitrose to promote its new range Essential Waitrose. Clearly it feels the need to follow the general trend of being seen to offer customers more value-led options.

It’s clear what Waitrose is responding to. Ever since the credit crunch turned into a prospective depression, there has been a new air of thrift around. The media have been amplifying and spreading the theme for months now. Food is one area of retailing where detailed media attention is a constant, and stories of how much can be saved by various strategies makes very attractive TV fodder.

Thus was born discounter chic - the idea that relatively well-to-do people suddenly found it trendy to seek out their local German discounter and fill their trollies with delights they found there. Stories of this type have been repeated endlessly despite the fact that so far no material shift in shopping patterns has emerged.

It’s difficult for a brand like Waitrose, known for decades as the quality grocer, suddenly to adopt a value mantle.

I know this, because we face the same issue at Superquinn in Ireland. More so, if anything, since the discounters have 10 per cent of the Irish market and the recession there is far more severe.

In these conditions, with the media relentlessly reminding everyone of the potential for savings elsewhere, it is easy to conclude that value is the only thing on customers’ minds, and to react by filling your stores with bargains while advertising them aggressively to lure the customers back in.

I once did an evening class in drawing, which I’m sorry to say did little more than confirm that my talents in that direction are modest. But I do remember learning one technique, called negative spaces, where you could sketch an object by drawing the dark spaces or shadows on and around it - when you’d finished drawing those, the object itself would emerge from those parts of the paper not covered by pencil. The first time I did it, it seemed like magic.

There’s a parallel here. In most normal scenarios, the customers leaving you for another retailer are a small minority. The majority can be defined as those who are not choosing to go elsewhere - they prefer to continue shopping with you. So they are being motivated by something else, which is almost certainly the traditional core values of your brand.

So, instead of looking only at the negative spaces of the defecting customers, it is important to look at the remainder, the loyal customers - and to make sure that whatever you do, you retain the things that are making them loyal. In the long term a retailer can only thrive by having clear credentials, and gaining and retaining customers who value those credentials.

I’m sure Waitrose will do this. As a customer, I haven’t been particularly influenced by the arrival of Essential Waitrose, but I would certainly defect if anything happened to core range and quality.

Simon Burke is chairman of Majestic Wine and Superquinn