Cape & Islands News

Stop & Shop rebrands, Christy's offers discount

Stop & Shop rebrands 360 stores, Christy's offers discount
Shared gas promotion ends today, rebranding costs mega-millions

By James Kinsella

The "Numerati" will get you anyway

   If you think that Stop & Shop's "rebranding" at whatever astronomic cost is an offense to your sensibilities, consider the shopping cart of the future.
   According to NPR's Talk of the Nation this week the supermarket industry is about to Amazon and Netflix you big time.
   Soon when you enter the market and grab a cart, you will be asked to swipe your courtesy card in a small onboard computer which will know you entire food buying history, and the cart's onboard screen will suggest purchases based on your tastes, and you weaknesses.
   The store will adroitly use your shopping foibles to lure you to items not on your shopping list.
   You may welcome Amazon or Netflix telling you "People who bought this item also like these..." except the cost to you check-out time will be much higher and happen every time you shop.
The defense?
   Don't swipe your courtesy card.
Most people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day, often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated by courtesy cards, email messages, credit card purchases, cell phones calls and Internet shopping is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians, who are poised to use it to control human behavior.

Stop & Shop, which operates the biggest supermarket chain on Cape Cod, is spending an undisclosed amount of money on an extensive corporate re-branding campaign.

The initiative includes a new logo, new uniforms for the supermarket's employees, a larger line of fresh prepared foods, and an expanded offering of the company's own food products.

But as for what a number of local Stop & Shop customers would like to see in the stores - the coupon that gave them a discount of 20 cents per gallon of gas at local Christy's of Cape Cod convenience stores - the company is standing by its decision to end the campaign, which began a little over a year ago.

"It always was a short-term program," Stop & Shop spokeswoman Faith Weiner said about the gasoline discount program, whose costs essentially were split between the supermarket company and Christy's. "It always had a planned ending."

Stop & Shop stopped issuing the 20-cents coupons two weeks ago, but those coupons still remained valid up till Thursday, Oct. 2. The company also discontinued a 10-cents-per-gallon discount at its own gas stations off-Cape.

Will Stop & Shop offer gas coupons here?

Weiner said Stop & Shop is exploring the possibility of renewed gas discounts on the Cape, but declined further comment.

Meanwhile, after a successful test, Christy's has decided to strike out on its own with its own gas discount program.

Starting last Saturday, Sept. 27, the chain, which operates 12 stores on the Cape, offered a discount of 10 cents per gallon for customers who pay in cash.

While the discount is half the size of the previous rate and cannot be used with credit cards, customers can obtain the discount with no other purchase.

Stop & Shop won't reveal cost for rebranding (above) but industry experts say it can run to a half million per location and Stop % Shop has 360.

Under the shared program, customers had to buy $50 or more in a shopping visit to Stop & Shop to get a 20-cents-per-gallon coupon.

Christy Mihos of Yarmouth, the owner of Christy's, said the previous promotion was an expensive one, costing his chain and Stop & Shop an average of $60,000 a week.

But Mihos said the promotion proved its worth by drawing more customers to the convenience stores and increasing the money shoppers spent per visit.

Weiner declined to say how much money was spent on Stop & Shop's rebranding. "We don't give out any of that information," she said.

Rebranding can involve a fair amount of expense.

A New Zealand government agency just rebranded at a cost of $6,370,000. Several other news accounts suggest that corporate rebranding can run between $400,000 and several million per retail store.

Weiner said the rebranding initiative came from Stop & Shop rather than its owner, Royal Ahold of the Netherlands. The rebranding, she said, is not cosmetic but rather a symbol of real changes that the company is making to help its customers experiencing more difficult economic times. Weiner said the initiative is several years in the making.

As for Christy's 10-cents-off promotion, Mihos said the program is working well and has been well-received.

See the new logo on Stop and Shop here