Pump it Up

A few years ago, I wrote in this space about how brand loyalty drives our decisions, even when illogical.

I talked about driving out of my way to buy gas at Shell stations, even though all gasoline comes from the same refineries purifying the same crude oil.

That was when driving around for the brand you thought you liked wasn’t incredibly costly or idiotic. And maybe you’d get a cheap two-liter of Mountain Dew for your troubles. Or enough fill-ups for a free car wash.

Today, I have long abandoned “brand loyalty” for “cheapest.” And look who’s got my loyalty now. That icon of fueling up: Kroger!

More and more Kroger supermarkets are building gas pumps into their parking lots. And the gas prices are low. But there’s even more. If you’re a Kroger loyalty customer, you get a three-cents-a-gallon discount. If you spend $100 in any month in the store, the discount jumps to 10 cents.

So all those experiments and concept-testing and focus groups about creating the perfect experiential store environment have come down to the price of gas.

For some reason, the plight of the supermarkets continues to capture our popular attention. In September, The New York Times revisited the subject once again. It ran a cartoonist’s vision of “dreaming up a new supermarket” to survive in today’s lifestyle-driven marketplace. Artist Bruce McCall’s version had live cows and an orchard, so the meat and produce are really fresh.

Special checkout lanes had steam pistons shooting shoppers through the process in 1.3 seconds. Vacuums sucked groceries out of the cart, priced and packed them and propelled them by compressed air into disposable rollaway containers.

The checkout stations were named and personalized: Nutritionists, Coupon Nuts, Dawdlers, Whiners, Musers and Cranks.

It had advanced hovercrafts carrying shoppers around the store. And there was a kiddie playpool in the center of the store, while parents shopped.

“The classic supermarket is adrift, unsure of how to hold shoppers who are demanding nicer stores, organic produce, hearth-baked bread and artisanal cheeses, all without paying too much,” wrote Times reporter Kim Severson.

“Supermarkets… are throwing everything they can think of at shoppers,” Severson wrote. “At Giant Super Foods, [shoppers] can consult with a staff nutritionist. At a Food Lion, an automated health clinic spits out blood pressure information and reads glucose meters.

“And some changes are actually about the food. Grocery marketers believe the way to a shopper’s wallet is to provide meal solutions, [as if] meals are some kind of problem. To that end, stores are collecting all the ingredients for one meal at a kiosk, offering samples and the recipe so shoppers don’t have to cruise the aisles.

“Stores are also trying to capture the health-conscious consumer. Hannaford recently rolled out a nutritional analysis system that uses stars to rank food by its nutritional value.”

Supermarkets’ battle with Wal-Mart on one end and Whole Foods on the other for market share raises all kinds of questions about what people want, where and why they shop and what this says about our 21st Century lifestyle. What will our cave drawings tell future archaeologists about us? Americans buying discounted sweatpants and everyday-low-price cottage cheese in one gigantic store, and then spending $12 for a bottle of olive oil at a food boutique.

Perversely, the gas crisis has dropped providence into supermarkets’ laps, inhibiting shoppers’ willingness to drive from one end of town to the other, cherrypicking for cheap stuff here, gourmet stuff over there.

But wait. Is that the sound of gas prices falling? Good for us. But maybe Kroger ought to begin investigating hovercrafts.