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Consumers are changing for good says Asda chief
Archived article dated Wednesday May 20th 2009
The relationship between retailers and their customers is undergoing rapid and permanent change which companies must prepare themselves for, Asda president and chief executive Andy Bond told the audience of the first BRC Annual Retail Lecture last night (19 May).
by Matthew Valentine
“The future won't be about going back to the recent past,” says Bond. He predicts that increasing limits on natural resources, along with a rise in consumer knowledge and information sharing via the internet, will empower consumers to make permanent changes in their behaviour. Key to these will be the ways in which they shop and what they expect from retailers.
“People are redefining the essence of what they need and want, and being creative in finding solutions to getting that,” Bond told listeners. He believes that consumers are moving from a 'do it yourself' to a 'create it yourself' mentality, citing increasing levels of bulk buying, home cooking and bulk cooking, plus a 50 per cent increase in sales of Asda hair dye, as evidence.Bond believes that consumers are losing trust in many large organisations and placing it instead in family and local communities. He believes that supermarkets, alongside schools and GP surgeries, should take a pivotal community role in the future, but that they must change to provide what shoppers now want.
He says the “opportunity and threat” of price comparison and review websites are “changing many businesses today, forever. Customers are shaping businesses rather than businesses shaping customers”. Transparency and honesty are now demanded by consumers, Bond says, and attempts to obscure that can be exposed quickly.
Bond says the scale of change to give consumers increased power could be as fundamental as the increased power given to employees when unions first became widespread. He ended his lecture with a call for retailers to make sure they are ready.
Tagged as: Andy Bond | Asda | BRC Annual Retail Lecture
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