Retailing's big idea is customer care - Column

Discount Store News, June 6, 1994 by Gene Hoffman

SPECIAL TO DSN - Retailing reminds me of the Mississippi River. Big. Swift. Ever-changing. Unrelenting. Always challenging. Rather unpredictable. Impersonal under stress. And fun to be involved with.

My own retail strategies, observations ad predictions have not always been accurate, but they have been a constant source of creative satisfaction. I love to watch a customer's reactions to "caring" store associates, innovative merchandise and displays, pricing and store formats. All are part of the process of developing high-value perception.

In the earlier, less hectic days of American retailing, there may have been a closer personal relationship between the retailer and his customer, a relationship conceived in fair play and dedicated to the proposition that fairness and friendliness encourage bonding and loyalty.

The retail store began as a human institution serving people's needs, then their wants - not solely a money making organization. Shoppers usually felt comfortable, safe and welcomed under such a retail roof.

As the country grew, the "retail river" felt pressure to flow faster. Eventually, at least four infrastructural changes began to affect retailing:

* The industry proliferated into niche segments.

* It also consolidated.

* Private ownership gave way to public ownership.

* Retailing's prime "customer" focus transferred from the consumer to Wall Street as most management incentives were heavily based on pleasing the criteria of "The Street."

Is that passing parade good or bad? I say it's neither. Perhaps it's time for our great and our struggling merchants to rethink the real purpose of their business. While profit is the necessary and absolute end result, the true purpose of any business is to create and keep a customer.

When I was leading American's largest food wholesaler, Supervalu Wholesale Food Companies, we took the strength was our lack of authority. If any of our customers didn't give us all their business, we accepted the obvious fact that someone else served them better than we did in those areas where they got "our" customer's business. That philosophy served Supervalu very well as it triples its size in a decade.

When Joe Antonini retained me to consult with Kmart on the creation of a leading-edge, associate- and customer-oriented supercenter concept, I suggested that "we" make Super Kmart Centers the second home for people in each trading area: a place for folks to visit, gather together in safety and comfort, be served as they wished to be with the freshest products in America and become participants in the "greatest river on earth." Of course, out of that process would have to come the profitable cash flow that every healthy business requires.

Today, 30 Super Kmart Centers are operating under David Marsico's customers-caring philosophy, which always inspires store associates to put the customer first.

As 1993 ended, I passed the baton on to younger, surer hands. In 1994, I hope the Super Kmart Center team maintain the speed of the rapid retail river they are embarked upon.