More and more grocers are entering the retail fuels market

  • More and more grocers are entering the retail fuels market

    According to Convenience Store News, an increasing number of grocers are entering the retail fuels business. Many grocers see the fuels business as a way to compete against the much larger national retail chains like HEB and Walmart. Grocers also see fuels as a way to build strong relationships with customers, for example, tie-ins between grocery items on promotion and fuel incentives.

    What does this mean to the retail fuel manager? It means the retail fuel manager has to constantly be on guard, watching to see if a new competitor is changing the market landscape by slicing the retail fuel volume pie into smaller pieces. It means competitor survey prices need to be carefully analyzed to make sure they are truly comparable, without any kind of embedded reward discount that may throw off competitive price analysis. And it means it’s increasingly important to maximize overall store profitability both on the forecourt and in-store.

    PriceAdvantage offers a powerful report that allows the fuel manager to view in-store merchandise sales overlayed on top of retail fuel sales so you can quickly see the effectiveness of both fuel and in-store promotions. The report is a Volume Correlation report and allows you to see store by store, or by market, the elasticity between forecourt transactions and in-store purchases. It is this type of information that allows you to be most profitable in this ever increasingly competitive landscape.

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