RETAILING CHANGES

Press, Volume C, Issue 29468, 21 March 1961, Page 10

RETAILING CHANGES

Supermarkets’ Possibilities

More efficient means of retail distribution would have to be found in New Zealand in the future. The rate of production was gradually overtaking the rate of distribution. “We produce by machine and distribute by hand,” said Mr T. Ah Chee, manager of an Auckland supermarket firm, at a convention of the Independent Grocers’ Alliance in Christchurch.

Mr Ah Chee, who recently studied modern trends in retailing in the United States, said that the supermarket and shopping centre had become a “way of life” in America.

Grocers must study "modern merchandising methods if they want to make more money,” he said. People were getting lazier and lazier but at the same time the job of retailing and servicing was being done better. “The car park is the front door to business. If you can’t get them into the car park, you can’t get them into your shop.” The supermarket, theoretically, was many shops in one. Instead of having many managers, many accounting problems, several staff cloak and canteen facilities, and many small advertising programmes the supermarket had one of each.

“You can do things in a supermarket that the small merchant has no show of doing.” Mr Ah Chee said that the three elements of the supermarket were “self-service, showmanship, and dramatic low prices. Keep the housewife guessing with big slogans, banners, advertising tickets, displays and cut the prices.” Self-service grocers in New Zealand thought that the trundlers used in shops were too big. “They are only 4500 cubic inches capacity. In the United States the trundlers used are from 8000 to 12,000 cubic inches.” He appealed to grocers to look ahead and venture into the supermarket. “It needs men with the courage to dream, the ability to organise, and the strength to carry it out; and you are the men,” said Mr Ah Chee.