The retail mix within the context of local supermarkets

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to get a better insight of the retail marketing mix concept applied to the local supermarket context. The main objective of this study was to identify the preferred retail mix of shoppers and explain how this can be improved by way of recommendations aimed at the retail elements with a view of providing a more coherent approach to better target shoppers. The study will employ both secondary and primary data sources. Sources for secondary data will mainly include articles and journals, and content analysis of the main local supermarkets' websites and web sites of large supermarket chains abroad, with the aim of obtaining a better understanding of the retail mix techniques. Primary data has been collected by means of focus groups, on-site field observations of the retail mix elements and a random sample survey covering 190 local shoppers by way of a questionnaire. All effort has been made for this study to be as correct and true to the facts as possible. Having said this, no research instrument is a perfect science and may tend to suffer from certain biases. One such bias was the time element and if given more time, a larger sample size would have been chosen and more focus groups sessions would have been conducted. Following analysis of data and collected evidence the study presents the main results in Chapter 5. On the basis of these findings the study also puts forward a number of recommendations, with the aim of helping retailers target better potential customer segments and profile audience.