GNC's New Mall Strategy

General Nutrition Corp. (Pittsburgh) will be installing cart kiosks this month in the aisles of 25 large malls across the country, the same malls in which the health-goods retailer already has stores.

The strategy is designed to make certain new and/or best-selling products more visible and accessible to shoppers. The cart kiosks – located in malls in California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas — will feature some of GNC's best-selling products, including ArginMax (designed to support male and female satisfaction) and Scan Diet?, GNC's exclusive meal replacement weight-loss product.

“This is an exercise in one-on-one marketing that places a small selection of GNC's hottest products right in front of consumers in major metropolitan malls,” said Roberta Gaffga, senior vp of marketing. “The cart kiosk program not only introduces consumers to our best-selling products, it also serves as a roadmap pointing them to our stores in these malls. This is truly low-cost, consumer-friendly marketing.”

GNC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Numico N.V. (Zoetermeer, The Netherlands), a worldwide market leader in specialized nutrition, operates more than 4500 retail outlets throughout the United States and in 26 foreign markets including Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico. Royal Numico's family of companies also includes Rexall Sundown, Inc. (Boca Raton, Fla.), a major supplier to the mass market; sports nutrition leaders MET-Rx and Worldwide Sport Nutrition; and the marketing operation of Unicity Network (encompassing the multi-level operations and products of Enrich International and Rexall Showcase International).