Stationery shoppers: few brand demands - discount house consumers

Discount Store News, Oct 18, 1993

Stationery shoppers are the least brand-conscious of any consumer, but are slightly more particularly this year than they were in 1992.

According to this year's Top Brands survey of consumers, just four in 10 stationery shoppers said they have a preferred brand of stationery, the lowest brand preference rating in all 23 categories in the store. But the percentage of brand-conscious shoppers did inch up slightly from last year.

The reason stationery shoppers are so casual about the brands they buy is probably related to the category's domination by school supplies, particularly paper products. Consumers tend not to care about brands in this particular item.

But the push by manufacturers in the past few years to create more fashion-forward merchandise in pencils, locker accessories, backpacks and organizers, has lifted consumer awareness of branded goods, though only slightly.

The lack of overwhelming consumer preference for branded merchandise in this category has not affected consumer satisfaction with the merchandise selection at discount retail.

When asked to rate their confidence of finding the brands they seek on a nine-point scale, stationery gets a mean 7.55. Half the respondents said they were completely satisfied with the stationery offerings (nine).

These customers are so easily satisfied that 82% of them would switch brands if their preferred brand was unavailable. This percentage was the highest switch rate in the survey, and marked a five percentage point increase from 1992.

In addition, stationery consumers are also the most willing to try private label merchandise. Nine out of 10 shoppers said they were willing to try private label or store brand stationery. This offers retailers a huge opportunity to forward their own brand of merchandise and possibly create a unique and profitable position for themselves in the market. Target and Kmart appear to be the furthest along with private label in consumers' minds. According to responses, nearly two in 10 consumers who shopped these two chains in the past year said they look for private label stationery goods.

Store managers named Stuart Hall, Cambridge, Scotch/3M, Sangamon and Norcom as top performers.

Overall, shoppers look for Mead and Bic products plus a fairly short list of other branded goods. But there are many brands available, and between 15% (Target shoppers) and 25% (Busters) named brands other than the 13 specifically listed. Each failed to garner enough responses for a separate breakout and was grouped into "other."

Empty Nesters are the least aware of stationery brands, with all but one brand, Bic (19%) receiving fewer than one in 10 mentions.

Store managers and consumers agree on only five of the top 10 stationery brands: Mead, Bic, Papermate, Crayola and Pentel.

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