by John Keller | Oct 10, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
CEFCO Convenience Stores announced they have acquired two more c-store sites, this time in Collinsville and Marion Mississippi. This purchase follows on the heels of CEFCO’s acquisition of 69 stores in August. Once this acquisition is complete, CEFCO will operate a total of 194 convenience stores throughout Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
CEFCO uses PriceAdvantage fuel price management software solutions to handle all their retail fuel pricing. CEFCO also has Skyline electronic gas price signs that complete the closed loop fuel price management cycle from surveys, to fuel price optimization, to fuel price execution, to confirmation. The CEFCO PriceAdvantage implementation includes integration with VeriFone and Gilbarco POS systems, as well as their PDI system.
by John Keller | Sep 30, 2011 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
According to OPIS Market Share and Efficiency Score Retail data for Q3 2011, PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software solutions customers are industry leaders across multiple categories.
The list of convenience stores with the highest efficiency ratings include longtime PriceAdvantage customers Sheetz and Royal Farms. The efficiency rating compares fuel volume market share to number of retail outlets.
In the Mid-Atlantic region, Sheetz was one of three brands with efficiency ratings of over 3.0, and in the top five for fuel volume market leaders. Sheetz also scored highly in the efficiency rating in the Southeast region, with the second best score of 5.64. In the Great Lakes region, Sheetz had the highest efficiency rating of any fuel retailer.
PriceAdvantage Fuel Price Management software is a key reason why industry leaders are able to get their optimized fuel prices to the street in less time and with less error, getting the right price to the right store every time.
by John Keller | Sep 28, 2011 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software, Industry News
According to the latest MasterCard SpendingPulse report, U.S. gasoline consumption was down 2.7% compared to the previous year for the week ending September 23, 2011. For the four week average, demand was down 2.9% compared to the previous year. Demand was down 2% from the prior week. According to the report, that marks the 27th week in a row where demand has continued to fall.
The MasterCard report is based on sales transactions across 140,000 stations throughout the U.S.
From a fuel price management perspective, fuel analysts and fuel managers must use their fuel pricing software solutions to carefully monitor demand in each of their markets, and acknowledge that demand quite possibly is lower than previous years. Fuel analysts and managers mustn’t panic if they see demand trending downward, given the overall demand shifts across the nation as a whole.
by John Keller | Sep 28, 2011 | Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
According to the US Energy Information Administration, demand for finished motor gasoline including “fuel ethanol blended into motor gasoline” is down for the first six months of 2011. The first six months of 2011, which is the most recent data captured by the US EIA, shows the per month average for motor fuels consumption down 2%, compared to the first six months of 2010. The monthly consumption average for the first six months of 2011 is 2% lower than 2009 as well.
Fuel Managers are wise to budget their fuel volume plans based on this ongoing decline in demand averages, acknowledging that the overall market in their area could very well be shrinking.
by John Keller | Sep 26, 2011 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
Convenience Store News reports that three New Jersey gas stations are being charged with illegal price changes after Hurricane Irene. The stations are accused of raising their fuel prices multiple times in one day which is illegal in the state of New Jersey, and could result in fines of $1500 each. The State Office of Weights and Measures also investigated the gas stations for raising prices more than 10%, what New Jersey calls price gouging.
Fuel Pricing solutions such as PriceAdvantage can help in situations like this in three ways:
- Keep control of fuel price changes at Headquarters. The Fuel Price Management solution PriceAdvantage can be configured to remove the Store Manager from the fuel price change process, and initiate all fuel price changes only at headquarters. This means no unauthorized fuel price changes starting at the store.
- Set price change thresholds. PriceAdvantage allows price changes to be kept below the set threshold, meaning a price change can never be more than the set percentage over the current price. In this case, if the threshold is set to 9%, any price change of more than 9% would be rejected as unauthorized.
- Reduce audit time. PriceAdvantage provides a series of reports making it easy to show auditors the price change history at each store. That means when an audit is inevitable, the time it takes to provide the needed information is reduced to minutes.
These New Jersey stores did not have PriceAdvantage in place, but if they had, their troubles would have likely been reduced, and possibly eliminated entirely.
The original NACS article is here.
