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Even better, over half of those surveyed said they were “highly in favor” of personalization for grocery promotions. In general, personalization positively influences customers: According to a study by Infosys, 86% of respondents who experienced personalization reported that it influences what they buy to some degree, and a quarter said it has a significant influence over their purchasing behavior. Not only that, but even if a store’s customer base does regularly use the Internet, three-quarters of consumers feel that online surveys interfere with their online experiences.īesides making the decision to invest in print instead of digital surveys, Messer opted to personalize those mailed surveys rather than sending generic mail pieces. Because 37% of Piggly Wiggly NC’s customers are both rural and over 65, this is an important consideration. Research proves him right: Internet-only surveys can be subject to significant biases, including the fact that rural customers and those over 65 are less likely to use the Internet than urban and younger customers.

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“But we felt our customers would be more inclined to fill out a survey they received in the mail and bring it back for free products, and wouldn’t fill out a survey online,” he says. Messer could have quickly and cheaply blasted out an email survey to the store’s customers or installed a pop-up survey on the store’s website. In 2018, Messer discovered that one of his stores was lagging behind the rest in terms of sales and decided to survey customers of that store to find out where the weak areas were. Implementing a Customer Satisfaction Survey to Enhance the Customer Experience The result: The surveys delivered via personalized mailers helped Messer collect customer data, gather valuable feedback, address the issues at the flagging store, and increase that store’s revenue. So when Messer noticed that one of his stores was underachieving, he hired Smart.Market for Business to create highly personalized customer satisfaction surveys to ferret out the reason for the decline. Eventually, he became VP of merchandise at the wholesale grocery distributor MDI in Hickory, N.C., and finally, in 2016, he became president of Piggly Wiggly NC, which is comprised of 38 stores in eastern North Carolina. He’s been in the business since he started bagging groceries at Lowes Foods 40 years ago, where he worked his way up to manager of the store. James Messer, president of Piggly Wiggly NC, knows groceries. Piggly Wiggly also was the first store to provide checkout stands, price mark items individually, offer shopping carts, and use refrigerated cases for produce. Its original location, in Memphis, was the first self-service supermarket before this, customers would place their orders with a store clerk, who would gather the items. Piggly Wiggly, a supermarket chain with over 600 independently owned stores in 17 Southern and Midwestern states, has always been about innovating. Grocery stores already operate on a razor-thin profit margin of 1% to 3%, and all this competition puts even more pressure on the independents. Not to mention, consumers can buy drinks, candy, paper towels, and other grocery items almost everywhere they turn, from gas stations to office stores. Amazon and meal delivery services assault the stores from online big-box businesses like Walmart and Target entice shoppers with convenience and low prices and niche grocers like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and ALDI siphon off yet more customers. Their biggest problem used to be the big supermarket chains, but now they’re facing competition from all sides. Independent grocery chains have it hard these days.

Piggly wiggly circulars