Wednesday, April 13, 2011

This came from the RAB last week and is a good thought-starter for your sales team:

Morning and evening commutes are peak times for super-heavy users of convenience stores to visit, while moderate and light users tend to visit more during the evening commute, according to research by The NPD Group, a leading market research company.

Super-heavy and heavy shoppers typically have blue-collar occupations and are 35 to 54 years old; moderate shoppers are slightly more likely to be between 55 and 64 and slightly more likely to have incomes between $45,000 and $75,000. Light c-store shoppers skew younger at 18 to 24, and older at 65 years old or more, and are more likely to be students or retired from the workforce.

According to the Convenience Store Monitor, super-heavy users have the highest incidence of visits during the morning and evening commutes (5-9a and 4-8p, respectively). Super-heavy users tend to purchase coffee, carbonated soft drinks and newspapers or magazines in the morning, and are more likely to purchase cigarettes or tobacco products, lottery tickets and alcoholic beverages in the evening.

Drive times are your prime time and creating customer promotions to help them increase that traffic more than what they are seeing can be your mission.

Good luck!