FMI 1998 ANNUAL CONVENTION 1998-05-11 (10)

DAVID ORGEL

CHICAGO -- The supermarket industry is getting better marks from consumers, according to research from the Food Marketing Institute, Washington.

Asked to rate their store on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 as the top score, consumers gave the industry an overall rating of 8.2, "which is slightly higher than we've been in the past, and not bad on the scale," Michael Sansolo, the FMI's senior vice president, said last week.

Sansolo was citing figures from the FMI's study called "Trends in the United States -- Consumer Attitudes and the Supermarket, 1998." He spoke last week to a large audience at the FMI's Supermarket Industry Convention and Educational Exposition.

"The news gets even a little better," Sansolo said. "When we looked at the percent of consumers that ranked us as either a nine or a ten on the scale, we see 40% gave us those ratings, which is higher than we've received in the recent past. That is terrific. It means we are doing a lot of things that make them very happy."

Nevertheless, Sansolo said, the data pointed to a troubling divergence in responses by age.

"When we did a demographic breakout of the statistics to look at age groups, we see the shoppers who are happiest with us are those age 50 and above, and especially those 65 and above give us the most good ratings most often."

The problem is the lack of good ratings from younger groups of shoppers, who are important to attract because they are the base for future families.

"They are the shoppers who we need and want to win over for the next 40 to 50 years," he said. "Those folks don't give us such good ratings. And they find a lot of areas in which they think we need to improve."

The FMI annually asks shoppers to relay what's important to them and in which areas they believe supermarkets excel. The difference between those two figures is called the performance gap, and the research points to areas in need of improvement. The problem is that consumers regularly say supermarkets need to improve in the very areas in which these stores traditionally excel.

"It's kind of mind boggling," Sansolo said. "You see things like low prices. But our industry has low prices. But consumers see a gap.

"Consumers point to the accuracy of shelf tags. But every study has shown we have the most accurate shelf tags. There's a gap.

"High quality perishables comes up. But perishables is the way we as an industry communicate our image to the consumer. They see a gap."

Sansolo concluded that the problems stem from miscommunication not unlike that in any other relationship. Consumers may not be hearing or understanding the messages being sent by the supermarket industry.

John Runyan, corporate senior vice president for Fleming Cos., Oklahoma City, shared the stage with Sansolo to offer his insights into consumer attitudes. Fleming conducted customer intercept interviews, which were videotaped and played at the convention. Many of these raised troubling questions for supermarkets.

Despite the fact that Fleming features boneless chuck roast every four to six weeks, many of the consumers couldn't remember the last time they cooked this item. "Food-service people take the middle cuts, and it leaves us with the chucks," Runyan said about supermarket practices. He said that while supermarkets like the tonnage, they are not appealing to a broad sector of consumers.

Consumers, who reacted positively to McDonald's Beanie Babies giveaways, admitted they didn't read supermarket ads in newspapers. Most said they didn't like or "hated" food shopping.