ATLANTA – The new NACS/Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council (NACS/CCRRC) met for the first time this past September to begin work selecting the group’s first study topic for the coming year. The topic chosen is timely and relevant for the industry: ways to strengthen the work culture in convenience retail stores in order to make our people more successful and the store more successful. While this topic was deemed the most relevant, the council debated several other promising topics during the meeting.

“We thought it would be helpful to NACS members if we reported out on the range of topics we looked at so that other groups might be able to move more quickly towards high-priority opportunities,” explained Council Chairman Hal Adams, senior VP & CMO of CST Brands Inc.

The three other potential topics considered by the NACS/CCRRC were:

• Serving more customers – The opportunity in this area was to improve the store’s products/service offering to attract more lite and non-customers. This would involve doing more with product categories that have significant upside growth potential in convenience retail.
• Marketing with mobile – The opportunity here is to understand how increasing use of mobile phones is changing the way customers do their convenience shopping, creating a deliverable that would serve as a roadmap identifying how convenience retailers can use mobile to make it easier and more likely for customers to visit and buy more.
• Anticipating the impact of technology – This opportunity would inventory the ways that information and communications technology is beginning to impact convenience retail, from the supply chain to store operations and customer engagement.  The report would have provided a framework that retailers could use to plan their response to these sweeping changes.

“We welcome reaction from retailers on these three additional topics, since we’ll be doing another study in the next year or so,” said Adams. If you have thoughts on any of the topics mentioned above, please direct your comments and suggestions to NACS/CCRRC Research Director, Bill Bishop at bill.bishop@brickmeetsclick.com.