Who are you meant to believe these days? Politicians? The Media? Or big business? After all, it’s not as if energy companies are reporting bumper profits one day having announced huge price hikes the day before.
Rightly or wrongly, people are becoming increasingly cynical, losing faith in the institutions and the brands they once trusted wholeheartedly.
It’s not surprising I suppose that as belts tighten, people find it hard to accept that multimillion-pound profits are justified, particularly when they are being forced to pay more to heat the house or fill up the car.
We all know it’s never quite that simple, but the underlying lack of trust must be a concern for us as retailers, and people are less loyal than they once were.
Shopping around is now a necessity for many, not simply a leisurely pastime for those with a few hours to kill.
So what can we do to restore faith and shore up our customer loyalty?
For us, the answer is a return to no-nonsense retailing. Get rid of phoney promotions and bogus bogofs that are funded by sneaky price rises in the weeks before. Who really believes that customers can’t see through the half price sofa Sale that seems to last all year round?
Yet sometimes as a business you can’t do right for doing wrong. For instance, the cynics always accuse petrol retailers of putting up prices at the pumps as soon as world oil markets head northwards, but suspect they’re deliberately slow to react when prices go the other way.
I can only speak for Asda when I say that’s nonsense. But, in my view, too many retailers do still rely on slight of hand or smoke and mirrors to bank a little extra profit before doing the right thing.
So often the cynicism is justified. Let’s take petrol again. I can’t believe how many retailers still hide behind a “local pricing” policy. When you think about that a little more, it beggars belief.
Can you imagine Asda being able to justify upping the price of milk by 2p a litre in one store, simply because there were no competitors within driving distance? So why is it fair for petrol retailers to do the same?
As the AA’s Edmund King said last week, at present there are two types of towns in the UK: those with Asda petrol stations and those without.
The ones with will see prices at neighbouring fuel stations drop to compete, the others will be hostage to when fuel sellers finally decide to pass on wholesale reductions.
Nothing is more guaranteed to make drivers unhappy than seeing fuel in neighbouring towns 2p to 3p cheaper than in their own. And it shouldn’t take representations from local MPs or naming and shaming in the media to convince fuel retailers to pass on price reductions.
So as a retail industry that prides itself on being consumer led, we need to ask ourselves what more we can do for our customers during these tough times. If we don’t, we risk losing their loyalty when we need it most.
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