The last decade saw many retailers opening up their hypermarket formats across the country and luring the Indian populace with the'value for money' proposition. As one of the prominent players, SPAR Hypermarket and supermarkets unveiled their first Indian store in 2007, and has grown to 17 stores across 9 states today. Founded in 1932 in Netherlands, the multinational retail chain - SPAR - meets the requirements of 11 million customers everyday across the world. The retailer's shopper marketing initiatives in India live up to their Chairman - Micky Jagtiani's words "Carefully listen, constantly adapt and always deliver". We caught up with Pearlraj P Cannivady, VP - Marketing, SPAR Hypermarket, to learn more about their shopper marketing strategies and the importance of partnering with brands to create a great in-store experience for their customers. Read on.

What kind of platform does SPAR provide for brands to engage with their customers?

Freshness is our core value, which extends beyond merchandise retailing and seeps into customer experience. Today, the customer has various choices, so we have to partner with various brands and offer the'freshness' experience within the store. For instance, the summer season is known for pickle making. And back in the days, our moms and grandmothers brought the fruits & vegetable, cut & dried them, selected right spices & oils and prepared the pickle. But this tradition is dying out with the availability of readymade pickle jars on the shelves. So recently, we set up a pickle station, where shoppers could pick up ingredients and even get their fruits & veggies cut. I think that these partnerships with brands will help us differentiate from the rest. For e.g.. a namkeen brand can have a counter, where customers can whip up his/her own chat which brings about engagement and freshness value to the customer.

What efforts go into capturing and retaining the shopper at the store?

The regular mediums of advertising have become so competitive and cluttered. If you pick up a newspaper on a weekend, it is crowded with each brand/ retailer talking about their proposition. I believe that it only works when you stick to your core proposition and deliver consistently. So, we try to capitalise the customers walking into our store and try to promote something that they would not be exposed to otherwise. We highlight in a clear and engaging manner about things like new trends in toys, information on sourcing fresh produce, which works very well. In some categories you will be able to invest heavily and talk about it in the market but other smaller categories are important too. For instance, fruits & vegetables are small in term of value but high on emotional value and influences the purchase decision maker, as that is what they provide to their family.

What is the role of shopper marketing in your overall marketing strategy?

In SPAR, the relationship with our customers is built on the products we offers and the manner in which they speaks to them. Our spend on shopper marketing is quite substantial, and more than most retailers.

What are the challenges you face in implementing in-store promotions & activities?

The industry for shopper marketing implementation has changed drastically in the past 10-15 years. It's more organised and structured. But players have huge opportunity to get more organised. They have to increase their presence geographically, improve in client servicing capabilities and improve delivery of these in-store promotions/activities.  

What new insight or purchase trends have you observed about your customers?

The evolving technology has impacted shopper marketing and it's a big win for us. And within this, analytics has seen tremendous changes. We have a fantastic loyalty management program, that tracks purchases of customers from where we know exactly what they are buying and what they are pairing it up with. For instance, if the customer picks up a bottle of Pepsi, we know they are also likely to pick up a 100 grams packet of Lays Magic Masala. This analysis helps us in planning in-store actives, promotions and combos to drive category consumption.

What new in-store initiatives or shopper marketing strategies are you planing to implement?

For us, it not about what new we are planning to do, but how the shopper is evolving. Today, customers consume very differently and can choose from many channels. Hence, we are also getting into omni-channel retailing. We believe that if the customer is evolving, we should evolve too!