The NACS Leadership Forum brought together leaders from the convenience industry for three days of high-level networking and thought leadership.
In late February, more than 200 retailers and suppliers converged in Miami for the first-ever NACS Leadership Forum. The three-day event brought together leading convenience retailers and suppliers to help generate thought leadership necessary to our industry’s future growth and success.
At the Forum, participants — in small breakout groups — explored research conducted by the NACS/Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council, enjoyed speakers from around the industry and experienced numerous opportunities to connect, conduct business and build relationships.
“The event was great in providing an opportunity to network with key retailers,” said one attendee. “It exceed my expectations!” said another.
Anchoring the event were presentations from an unparalleled line-up of speakers. Here are some brief highlights from their speeches…
One of the first presentations was by Wawa CEO Howard Stoeckel, who began his speech talking about today’s customer:
“Customers don’t feel well today. They have pangs of anxiety. They’re nervous. They don’t know what’s going to happen next…Customers are certainly more disciplined, less impulsive. They know what they want and how much they’re going to pay for it. They’re not out there buying things the way they did a couple years ago based on impulse.”
He continued, stressing how Wawa keeps a clear purpose in the midst of tough times: “We live by six values, and we have for the past 100 years, and they are: Value people because that is our competitive advantage. Delight customers. Embrace change. Do the right thing. Do things right. Have a passion for winning...We know who we are. The fact that the customer knows who we are too is very important at this time.”
Stoeckel concluded his presentation with some solid advice: “This is a time to leverage the right of way, build upon big volumes that we currently have and not try a lot of new things. We must build upon tradition, trust and our traffic...And retailers that leverage the traffic that they have, I think are going to win.”
The customer was front-and-center in general session presentations as Valero Senior Vice President of Retail Marketing Gary Arthur discussed how the company seeks to become more relevant to the 325 million customers it serves annually. The key to the company’s success is the employee, noted Arthur. “It’s that one-to-one relationship between the employee and customer that makes the difference in our business.”
“It’s all about the people,” stressed Arthur, in defining one of the many ways that Valero seeks to differentiate itself from the competition.
Anheuser-Busch President and CEO Dave Peacock got off the stage and into the audience to share how his company is getting to know its customers better by grouping them into three spectrums:
1. Similar attitudes and behaviors
2. Pallets, because the type of beer people drink is important, and
3. Occasions and needs states: the why and when they consume.
The convenience store channel is by far the brewer’s largest channel of trade, accounting for more than one-third of the company’s sales volume. “You are the gateway to a good time,” Peacock told retailers, “whether that’s relaxing at home after work or going to the NASCAR race. You guys are that gateway.”
Demonstrating that he understood the struggles of convenience retailers, on the final day of the Forum, Representative Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) talked about the struggles of small businesses in his region:
“Today over 50 percent of the storefronts in my hometown are closed. The longest serving community bank in the country, which gave out 68 percent of the small business loans in the central valley where I’m from, was closed by the FDIC two weeks ago.”
Cardoza focused the majority of his speech on how he and others are working with President Obama and the administration to resolve the current economic crisis:
“The reality is that we went away from those small-town values, we went away from those bedrock ideals of America, and this current financial crisis is almost as much about forgetting about who we are and where we came from.”
“The world is truly shifting on its axis — and the implications for convenience retailers are profound,” Coca-Cola Company President and CEO Muhtar Kent told attendees on Friday as the NACS Leadership Forum came to a close.
Kent cited four key developments that will have great bearing on the world in the years ahead:
1. The rising demand for energy, food and commodities: “We will have to manage our business in an economy of constant scarcity and cost pressure. This is the new normal.”
2. Rapid urbanization: “Last year for the first time in history, the majority of the people in the world lived in urban areas…We’re adding a city the size of Miami to the world’s urban landscape every month.”
3. A growing global middle class: “By 2020, nearly a billion additional people will ascend to the middle class — and our estimates, by the way, are very conservative.”
4. A massive shift toward convenience: “As more people, with more money, attain urban, time-strapped, on-the-go lifestyles, they will yearn for convenience.”
Kent called these changes the “New Equilibrium” because they are shifting the balance of the world. “No industry — believe me — no industry, sits more at the center of the New Equilibrium than convenience retailing,” he stressed.
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On Wednesday, day one of the Leadership Forum presentations, Paul Ballew, vice president of The Integer Group’s insight and strategy department, introduced the theme of positive disruption, which provided the framework for much of Thursday’s small-group breakout sessions. Disruption challenges conventional wisdom and encourages new ways of thinking — exactly what the Leadership Forum aimed to achieve.
Stressing a world of growth beyond “Bubba,” Ballew shared six shopper types: Drop-in Daily, Local Loyalist, Overstretched Mom, Mobile Professional, Highly Hesitant and Long-Distance Driver. Delving even deeper, depending on the shopper type, Ballew explained that these consumers place more or less emphasis on four basic values: time, quality, experience and price. These values can be depicted in a pyramid of needs consisting of safety, cleanliness and hospitality (at the base) and time enrichment and simplicity and ease (at the top).
The small group breakout sessions on Thursday allowed attendees to get into the heads of these shopper types and the hierarchy of needs by ranking tactical ideas in order of importance to the shopper type. For example: How would an Overstretched Mom react to Charmin-certified bathrooms? How would a Local Loyalist respond to a new drive-thru? Then, the ideas were charted based on time to implement and return on investment.
Results from the 10 breakout sessions were compiled and the insights gathered were reported by Ballew at Friday’s final sessions. A breakdown of each need in the pyramid was discussed, but Ballew shared what he thought was the main takeaway: “To me, the big ah-hah coming out of the study is when you focus on the customer — and really focus on the customer — you’re going to identify new opportunities at basic levels, new levels, and opportunities that I‘m sure are going to move your business forward. There are a number of retailers that I watch across the country that have put their customer first, and always first, and have been relentlessly successful in winning share and building loyalty.”
Further discussion about the disruption process that led to the CCRRC research can be found in the February issue of NACS Magazine. An extended version of the CCRRC report, “Emerging Opportunities in Convenience Retailing,” can be found at www.ccrrc.org in the brown NACS/CCRRC tab at the top.
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Many of the current convenience industry leaders got their start at the store level. Through hard work and commitment, these individuals followed their career paths to positions of senior leadership. The Jim Yates Scholarship was created to recognize and to support employees who demonstrate the potential and the determination to someday hold positions of senior leadership in the industry.
Yates Scholarship winners are awarded $3,000 for costs of undergraduate career education, community college or college, as well as travel, attendance and lodging at the NACS Show, where they are recognized at a special ceremony.
If you or your company would like to donate to the Jim Yates Scholarship Fund, complete the contribution form at www.nacsonline.com/leadership/YatesScholarship and e-mail it to Jenn Makarsky or fax to (703) 836-4564.