New Platform​

Enterprise sales is a long road to travel. As a company getting started, DecaSIM doesn't only want to wait for larger firms as they go through their evaluation process. In speaking with retailers of all sizes we came to the realization that our technology is just as viable and valuable to a small single-store retailer as it is to an enterprise-scale operation.

This market insight led to two month development process during which we packaged our solutions into a platform that is tailored to the needs and requirements of the single-store retailer but not at the exclusion of the multi-store banner.

New Interface​

The interface is centered around three zones; a marketplace tab, a tab for installed apps and a workspace. To access the interface you can register and sign-in using widely adopted social / email / workplace platforms.

Once registered you can browse the market place apps, some of which are free, some require a single payment and the remaining apps are subscription-based services.

Once installed, apps are activated by clicking OPEN, this automatically triggers the app to open in the workspace.

New Tools​

By creating an App Store we can bundle together the different features of DecaSIM into an app. Each app is a highly customized and targeted work-flows that can drive efficiencies and sales for your store.

Launch Apps​

At launch here is the list of apps we have published:

1. PDF to CSV convertor (Free), take a competitor's promo pdf and extract the products on promotion into a csv file.
2. Promo Publisher App (Subscription). Starting with an Excel workbook, the Promo Publisher will generate shareable html files containing your promotions. These digital flyers can then be shared via your socials or email/whatsapp or messaging.
3. Promo Publisher App (Free version). We have made available a free version of the app.
4. Store Locator (Paid). This app surfaces retailers by zip code and displays them on a map.

Intro Video​

We also made this video that gives an overview of the app store as well as a demo of the Promo Publisher app.

• Breadth of promo appeal (% promos on front page selected by at least one shopper)
• Depth of customer interest (% customers selecting any promo on a retailer's front page)

We know print and digital weekly ads work, but we believe that retailer advertising could work harder. Here are the top 3 reasons retailers lose the week, all of which can be avoided with DecaSIM: Insight.

1. Focus on National Brands

National brands have a disproportionate effect on promotion strategies, they more distribution and more promotional dollars to spend.

Featuring lots of national brands on the front page will drive up the breadth of the depth of appeal score, the measure that is indicative of winning baskets.. In the majority of categories, a well-known brand tends to be purchased with higher frequency. It is hard to create excitement around a high frequency purchase.

2. Weak Customer Understanding

This is somewhat related to the first point. Every retailer stocks a number of items that are unique to that banner, be it own-label or a branded-product. These are items that their customers value and are potential basket winners. Not featuring these items will reduce the customer appeal score of your weekly advertising.

Since retailer advertising inventory is finite, there is less space to feature promotions that help a retailer stand-out in the promotional landscape.

3. Too Many Promos

This is a by-product of a retailer's category silos. While there is an 'architect' of merchandising, a.k.a the chief merchant, the front page is not planned holistically. Each category is given space on the front page and the end result is a large number of promos fighting for space that all target the same loyal shopper type.

'Busy' advertising is hard to decode, and people who comparing ads to select the store for their basket are more likely to be swayed by banners that produce advertising that is easier to consume.

At the root of these three reasons is the information-bias of loyalty programs. These inherently cause retailers to only design and feature promos that are appealing to their most loyal customers. With DecaSIM: Insight we can build and design your weekly advertising to maximise appeal. This drives customers and sales without fail. Download our whitepaper to find out how it worked for one of our customers.

Here is a video of the team discussing this further:

The Contenders​

We selected three banners in this zip code; QFC (A Kroger Banner), Safeway and, a super-small regional banner, Metropolitan Market - a 10 store chain owned by Good Food Holdings. Of these three banners, Metropolitan Market only runs a digital ad, the other two run both print and digital. While saving costs, a digital-only weekly ad has the combined disadvantages of reduced offer quantity and lower offer density. Although, Metropolitan Market's digital ad looks very clean, and they have gone out on a strong peach-theme this week.

As far as the Kroger banner, QFC, we see this ad-formula every week. Invariably, they run a chicken promo in the top-left block and customers could grow to expect this each week. Potentially this means Kroger banners could be gamed by a more dynamic competitor.

Who Won​

Despite a formulaic looking ad, QFC won the week on the Customer interest metric. While Safeway's printed ad delivered high offer density, their promos weren't able to attract the interest of our AI Shoppers.

Key Takeaways​

Customer understanding is key to delivering a strong weekly ad and Kudos to Kroger for giving QFC license to tailor part of their weekly promotions to local items (NW Cherries / Sockeye Salmon). This helped them win the week. Unsurprisingly, Metropolitan Market's more premium pricing puts it out of contention but it attracted more customer interest than Safeway's ad. They also tried harder to generate customer interest in a non-week as far as sales go, devoting the majority of their prime blocks to peach-themed promotions.

The Contenders​

While there are three distinct banners in Liberty, MO, we have chosen just two for this week's analysis, HyVee and, local favorite, Price Chopper.

As you can see from the front pages, both banners are favoring the less-is-more philosophy. This could be driven by design principles, but more likely both banners know that customers will be doing a large holiday weekend shop and that is what is front-of-mind for them when selecting a retailer.

Who Won​

With only a handful of promos to choose from, our AI shoppers did not distinguish either banner in terms of promo appeal. However, when it comes to customer interest, 95% of our AI shoppers selected their hometown favorite, a convincing win for Price Chopper.

Key Take Aways​

While HyVee stores have a lot of autonomy when it comes to price and promotion, today's result is lesson in the importance of regional strength. With an HQ just 30 miles away, Price Chopper has many stores in and around Kansas City. High physical availability plays a big part in driving preference, and combined with a strong understanding of customer preferences, it is no surprise to see Price Chopper win at home this week.

There are a number of different avenues we can take:

• Select stores that are facing more intense competition and are operating at a close-to-loss position, or are at least in the lower quartile of performance. Given this would require internal data we are not in a position to run this analysis.
• Select stores that are potentially cannibalizing one another. Closing one of the stores and migrating customers to the open store will increase operating margins.

To arrive at a list of potential closures, we took the second approach and identified the 30 pairs of stores that are potentially cannibalizing one another, based on proximity.

The closest pairing of Kroger stores we found in our data is Food4Less in Santa Clarita and a Ralphs just 900 ft away in Canyon Country:

From a customer perspective both are on the same side of the highway, so it would seem feasible to close one store down and migrate sales to the other.

Below is a table of the top 30 pairs.

If you want to learn more then get in touch:

The Contenders​

We selected three banners in this zip code; Kroger, Whole Foods and, a regional banner, Needler's Fresh Markets - owned by Spartan Nash. Of these three banners, only Kroger runs a printed ad, the other two are digital only. While saving costs, running a digital weekly ad does have the combined disadvantages of reduced offer quantity and lower offer density. Although, Needler's does manage to pack in the promos in their front page this week.

Who Won​

Kroger's front page won the week on promo breadth (40% of promos selected) and customer interest (52.5% of customers selecting a promo). It's only interesting promo that helped it secure the win was the Raspberries/Blackberries Digital Deal. The other top promos that helped it secure the win came from national brands, these prices reflect the banner's scale rather than its merchandising prowess.

Key Takeaways​

Buying power counts for a lot and Kroger's weekly ad is evidence of that. However, we believe that there is an opportunity to win share from Kroger with smarter use of data combined with a willingness to break with a formula-approach to the weekly ad. As you can seen below, the Kroger machine has standardized its ad layout. Just as laziness helped code-breakers crack the WWII Enigma code, DecaSIM can help Kroger's competitors exploit the weaknesses of Kroger's weekly ad to drive baskets and share.

We looked at four banners in this region, The Fresh Grocer, Shop Rite, Acme Market and Kings Food. Its head-to-head of Wakefern co-op vs Albertsons family banners.

The Contenders​

Three of the four banners launch new promos on a Friday (very sensible imho) with Shop Rite hanging new price tags Saturday evening in readiness for the Sunday shopping rush. In this zip code it makes more sense to have a different phasing given they are in competition with another member of the Wakefern cooperative, The Fresh Grocer.

Its worth pointing out that these promos all expire before Fathers Day weekend so we are not seeing much of that theme coming through. Its worth pointing out that these promos all expire before Fathers Day weekend so we are not seeing much of that theme coming through.

The Front Pages​

Both Albertsons banners are relatively restrained in the number of items on their front page. Shop Rite and Kings Food are both maxing out their front page promo counts.

Who Won​

This week The Fresh Grocer won on both metrics - breadth of appeal and % customer interest, the metric that correlates with a higher share of new baskets. However, their front page is never going to be used as an example of precision retail marketing.

Some of the top items for The Fresh Grocer were:

• Green Peppers or Tomatoes on the Vine 99¢ lb.
• Canada Dry Ginger Ale Bottles 6-Pack 3 for $11
• Smithfield Bacon 3.99
• Pepsi or LIFEWTR Purified Water 1-Liter 4 for $5 when you buy 4
• Imported Provolone 9.99 lb.

Key Take Aways​

These Wakefern banners could be come a lot more effecient in their use of the Weekly Ad. In doing so they would become more effective, giving key items more space to stand out on the page. On that note, Kings Food deserves a special mention. Running fewer items on the front page will have no doubt further helped their Pork Ribs promo. Among our AI shoppers this promo helped them win a high % customer interest score despite having a front page with narrower appeal.

Results for Zip Code 14618​

This week the winning banner in this zip code was Whole Foods

Top items for this banner this week include:

• Red Cherries* $4.99/lb with Prime, $5.54/lb $7.99/lb
• Lobster Tails, 3-5 oz* 20% off with Prime, 11% off $7.99
• Colossal Easy-Peel White Shrimp, 8/12 ct* 30% off with Prime, 22% off $16.99/lb
• Bone-In Pork Loin Chops* 25% off with Prime, 16% off $6.49/lb Regular prices vary
• Red King Crab Split Legs and Claws* 20% off with Prime, 11% off Regular prices vary

Results for Zip Code 30024​

This week the winning banner on breadth of appeal in this zip code was Kroger Stores

Top items for this banner this week include:

• Bush's Best Baked Beans, Select Varieties, 15.8-16 oz 99¢ /EA With Digital Coupon
• Pork Back Ribs, Bone-In $2.99 /LB With Card
• Hillshire Farm Dinner Sausage, 12-14 oz or Ball Park Beef Franks, 14-15 oz
• Doritos, 8-10.75 oz or Cheetos, 6.5-10 oz or Ruffles, 7.25-10.25 oz
• Gatorade, Select Varieties, 28 fl oz 10/$10 With Card (Final Cost When You Buy 10)

However, Publix Ad wins the precision retail crown, securing 72% customer interest from 2 items - Corn and Asparagus

Results for Zip Code 07424​

This week the winning banner in this zip code was Fresh Grocer

Top items for this banner this week include:

• Green Peppers or Tomatoes on the Vine 99¢ lb.
• Canada Dry Ginger Ale Bottles 6-Pack 3 for $11
• Smithfield Bacon 3.99
• Pepsi or LIFEWTR Purified Water 1-Liter 4 for $5 when you buy 4
• Imported Provolone 9.99 lb.

Read the full post here

Results for Zip Code 70605​

This week the winning banner in this zip code was Kroger Stores

Top items for this banner this week include:

• Boneless Pork Half Loin $1.99/LB With Card
• Thomas' English Muffins 6 ct or Bagels, 6-10 ct
• Tyson Frozen Chicken Select Varieties, 16-26 oz $6.99/EA With Digital Coupon (Price without digital coupon is up to $8.99 each with Card.)
• Raspberries or Blackberries, 6 oz 2/$3 With Card
• Reese's Candy Select Varieties, 1.2-35.6 oz SAVE 25% With Card & Digital Coupon (Discount is taken off the lowest marked price. Item selection may vary by store.)

Results for Zip Code 85032​

This week the winning banner in this zip code was Frys Food

Top items for this banner this week include:

• Bush's Baked or Grillin' Beans 22-28 oz or Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce, 18 oz
• Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper or Squirt Select Varieties, 6-Pack, 16.9 fl oz Bottles
• Bud, Coors, Miller or Tecate 30-Pack, 12 fl oz Cans or Michelob Ultra 24-Pack, 12 fl oz Bottles or Cans or High Noon 12-Pack, 12 fl oz Cans. Select Varieties $21.99 With Card
• Tyson Frozen Chicken Select Varieties, 16-26 oz $6.99 /EA With Digital Coupon

Results for Zip Code 95350​

This week the winning banner in this zip code was Save Mart

Top items for this banner this week include:

• Eggo Waffles 10 ct. or Sunny Select Syrup 24 oz., select varieties, LIMIT 4 $1.99 ea
• Starbucks Coffee 12 oz. Bag or K-Cups 10 ct. or Nescafé 6-7 oz., select varieties $7.99 ea (When You Buy 5)
• Freschetta Pizza 17.96-30.88 oz. or Häagen-Dazs Waffle Cones 4 ct, select varieties $4.99 ea (When You Buy 5)
• Michelob Ultra or Twisted Tea, White Claw, Truly Hard Seltzer or Pacifico 12 pack 12 oz, select varieties + CRV, LIMIT 2 OFFERS Mix & Match $15.99 ea (When You Buy 2)
• Coho Salmon Fillet, Frozen, Farm Raised $6.99 lb

This week we hit 110 banners uploaded to our map and crossed 22,000 store locations uploaded to DecaSIM Compete. As we have seen in previous weeks, as our banner count increases we are adding banners with fewer stores. This week is no exception as we take a trip to East Meadow, NY. East Meadow, zip code 11554, is a hamlet on Long Island, NY, with population 36,806.

In terms of the phasing of the ad weeks, we see Stew Leonard's keeping it real with a Wednesday to Thursday ad week. Both Uncle Giuseppe's and Food Town begin on a Friday. Shop Rite, however, making the bizarre decision to start on a Sunday. The implications of changing tags on a Saturday after the busiest shopping day and potentially being out of stock on hot promos just as your competitors refresh theirs is hard to fathom.

The Front Pages​

The one stand out difference in front pages from these four banners is the one from Stew Leonard's. As well as being a web-only ad, it is featuring a handful of the items compared to the dense offers we see on the other three banners' ads.

Who Won​

Food Town picking up top spots on both our metrics this week. It's front page have a breadth of offers which contributed to a high potential share driver score. Capturing 52% of customer interest this week. Driving this performance was a strong grilling theme: Chicken Drum Sticks, Pork Chops, Squash and Kingsford Charcoal.

Key Take Aways​

Sometimes more is more. Food Town offered the right mix and breadth and depth without over packing the front page.

As it relates to Shop Rite's performance, perhaps it's promo strategy has to take into account it is coming to market after the two big shopping days; it's offers need to ensure there are deals on the shelves when next Friday/ Saturday rolls around. Having said that, they secured the second most chosen item (Lobster tails at 2/$11.98) so perhaps it is winning the Sunday Lunch trip.

Stew Leonard's deserves a mention, with fewer promos on its 'front' page it managed to win 30.4% of customer interest derived from two strong performing promos: Vidalia Onions and Salmon Fillet.

Read the full post here

After a big spending weekend we turn our attention to a new zip code and a different flavor of grocery retailer. With over 90 banners and 20400 locations mapped we are starting to find some real gems. Especially in the city of Newark, CA. Sitting on the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay. It has a population of 46,000 and is within 30 miles of the headquarters of two large banners, Safeway and Grocery Outlet.

Read on to see how the retailers performed or watch a video here of the results.

The Front Pages​

These four banners represent a mix of web-only and web+print weekly ads. As with previous weeks we are just using the front pages and using our generic USA AI shoppers to evaluate the promotions. The front pages, below, show two ends of the design / layout spectrum, ranging from the sparse, Grocery Outlet, to the dense, Safeway.

Who Won​

We judge the winner on two metrics, Breadth of Appeal and Potential For Driving Share. Ideally, a retailer wants to win on both - featuring the hot items to drive share combined with breadth of promos to help seal the deal. This week is a little different, and while Safeway got the top spot on Breadth of Appeal with two thirds of our AI shoppers selecting a front page item, it didn't have the hot item. That accolade went to Sprouts. Nearly 70% of shoppers ranked three of their items as their top item. For that degree of pinpoint precision, we think they are worthy winners this week.

Key Take Aways​

Sometimes less is more, when your competitors are filling their front pages with a 'spray-and-pray' approach - as we have seen in previous weeks - an easier to read design can drive effectiveness especially if you have strong promos running, as we saw with Sprouts this week. The counterpoint to this strategy is Grocery Outlet. Since their business model is about maximizing yield, using the weekly ad to drive units of specific items needs to take priority. The items featured are probably very close to their use-by-dates, as reflected by the deep discounts on each item.

99 Ranch Market, with 60+ stores is perhaps one of the largest regional grocer you have never heard of, had a noteworthy performance against three much larger banners. Four of its featured promos (Shrimp, Mushroom and Coconut milk x2) were selected by our AI shoppers this week.

For Memorial Weekend, we have headed west to the high desert of Elko, Nevada. Elko with a population of 20,800 sits on the Humboldt river and the I-80 freeway. Despite its small population, the town supports four banners, Albertsons, Raley's, Smith's and a Walmart Supercenter.

For our analysis we will exclude EDLP and smaller single-location banners, making a three horse race - appropriate for Elko's cowboy heritage. Memorial Day is a big grocery shop and retailers typically hold back some promotion budget from prior weeks in the hope that they can win larger baskets in the lead up to this weekend.

Front Pages​

Albertsons and Raley's front pages reminding shoppers it Memorial Weekend, and by implication reminding them to open up their wallets.

Who Won​

Smith's front page won on both our metrics, 1. retailer with most promos of highest appeal (breadth) and 2. retailer with highest percentage of customer interest (potential share driver). What is interesting was that our AI shoppers chose the pork back ribs at 2.99/lb as well as cherries at 3.99/lb, both items placed below the fold. Raley's got the second most selected item with their featured tomatoes on the vine promo at 1.97/lb.

Key Take Aways​

On holiday weekends, retailers are in a bind. On the one hand they want to have a strong set of lead promotions, yet they know their competitors will be doing exactly the same. This benefits the shopper but it is unlikely to help retailers win market share.

The maxim 'feature what they want, merchandise what you want to sell' held true for Smith's this week. They probably expected Albertsons and Raley's to run similar above-the-fold fresh items and similar national-brand centre store promos but what gave them the edge was the well-priced pork ribs, their diamond in the rough for this weekend.

Since the last count we have added over 6,000 locations and 40+ new distinct banners. We are approaching 20,000 distinct grocery locations from 84 separate banners. Truth be told there are some obvious banners still missing. Trader Joe's, Giant Eagle, HEB are notable in their temporary state of absence.

In addition to these omissions we have at least another 30 banners in the hopper, ready to add.

Visit the Compete Site and see if we have got your banners and Zip codes covered.

We have just added all Kroger banners as well as some strong regional banners to our map, search here for your store. For our analysis this week we have turned our attention to Sheboygan, WI, and selected just three banners: Kroger's Pick N Save, Meijer, and Festival Foods. Festival Foods is a regional banner with just 42 stores, all of which are in the great state of Wisconsin.

One thing to note is the large page count of the Meijer Weekly Ad - albeit it does contain promotions that run across multiple weeks which drives up the page count. Never the less a high page count is going to diminish the front-page performance. Both Pick N Save and Festival Foods start their promotional weeks on a Wednesday, a tried-and-tested choice

The Front Pages​

Meijer manage to squeeze a good number of promotions and offers onto the front page of the weekly circular, despite the page count and smaller page size.

Who Won​

The Kroger banner, Pick N Save, "won the week" with nearly 50% of our AI shoppers choosing an item from their front page. The combination of a high number of promos from a wide range of categories stood them in good stead. Festival Foods coming a respectable second place given that it does not have the buying power of either Kroger or Meijer. Pick N Save's top items were avocados, salmon fillets and Breyer ice cream.

Key Take-Aways​

There are some lessons to be learned from Festival Foods performance this week. It had a similar selection of featured items (Salmon, Chicken Breast and Avocados) to Pick N Save but was priced higher. Understandably, price will win over the price-conscious shopper. Given the relative differences in banner size, it is surprising to see Festival Foods going head-to-head with Pick N Save when it knows that it will lose on price. With a full view into the Festival Foods entire promotion calendar for this week DecaSIM's AI Shoppers would have found those items that would differentiate Festival's front page while remaining relevant to its customers, and therefore driving baskets off the front page.

We wanted to choose an appropriately themed location for this week's analysis. After a few hours in a Google Maps / Wikipedia rabbit hole we settled on The City of BrMotherly Love, aka Philadelphia ¹.

We have now added some more banners to our map, we have over 13500 grocery supermarket locations mapped and will be adding all the Kroger banners in the next week. This should bring us to nearly 16,000 locations.

As our reference store we selected the Acme Markets location at 7700 Crittenden Street, PA. 19118, and then selected three other stores within a mile or two of that location. We have excluded Aldi from this week's analysis. Interestingly, both Shop Rite and The Fresh Grocer are part of Wakefern Food Corp., a retailer-owned cooperative.

Unusually there is quite a disparity between the different starting days of the ad week. While these promotions and ads have been planned weeks in advance, there is probably a lot more pressure on Shop Rite since their merch team will know that a better Weekly Ad could drop just before the key shopping days of the week.

The Front Pages​

Both The Fresh Grocer and Shop Rite are running many of the same items on promotion this week, a quick scan shows at least five items featured on the front page of both ads:

• Eggo Waffles
• Hellman's Mayonnaise
• Turkey Hill Ice Cream
• Snapple Iced tea
• Scott Bath Tissue
• Fresh Corn
• Blueberries

In each case, Shop Rite is the same price or a few pennies cheaper.

Who Won​

Unsurprisingly, Shop Rite had a stronger front page, in terms of price vs The Fresh Grocer and in terms of range and price compared to Acme Markets. Having said that The Fresh Grocer took the top three spots among our AI Shoppers; steaks, tomatoes and potatoes being selected before any item from Shop Rite's front page.

Key Take Aways​

With a stronger front page from Acme, they could easily win the week among price-discerning shoppers. Both Shop Rite and The Fresh Grocer are not using any science to package together an effective and efficient front page. There strategy is to put as many items as possible on the front page and then rely on the shopper to do the work of piecing together the best deals. With some thought and application of DecaSIM's technology, Acme Markets could win baskets from both banners without having to give away margin.