Report: Four Kroger divisions lead competitors in return customers

 Denver’s King Soopers, a Kroger subsidiary, led all other grocers in customer loyalty between January and June of this year, according to inMarket location data.

Kroger placed second and two other subsidiaries of the Cincinnati-based grocer, Fry's and Harris Teeter, came in fourth and fifth overall respectively.

The results are according to the Spring 2017 Loyalty Report, which monitors the use of more than 50 million mobile devices per month through location data collected by about 1,000 apps. A retailer with 1 million visits from 500,000 devices, for instance, would record a score of 2. The average performance was 2.01.

Retailers were ranked based on repeat device visitation to the stores and were normalized for comparability so that the larger and smaller brands could be measured on an even playing field.

King Soopers scored 49% higher than the average grocery store and the report noted that the brand has upgraded many of its locations to include bistros, sushi bars, full-service delis, toy and clothing sections and outdoor patio furniture areas.

Though he feels the data signals optimism for brick-and-mortar grocers in terms of foot traffic, inMarket Chief Marketing Office Cameron Peebles added that in a digital age customers often visit physical locations in order to browse for items.

Sometimes, this results in a sale, and in other cases customers have left to price shop the product online.

Peebles says it is what retailers do with the time they have a potential customer in the store that can make the difference.

“What you’re seeing is a trimming down of retail and grocery,” said Peebles. “That means the truly innovative advertisers, the truly innovative companies are rising to the top.”

Grocers who employ inMarket can utilize the loyalty data to predict when repeat customers are due to return and tailor individualized marketing campaigns to push products that are likely to interest them before the trip to the store.

The information in the study was generated by data shared with inMarket by the apps that work with the company. Grocers did not need to be a client in order to be ranked.

Correction, Aug. 3, 2017: Previous headline updated to include the fourth member of the Kroger network

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