by John Keller | Aug 26, 2010 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
On August 19, 2010 I wrote a blog article discussing how critical it is for Fuel Managers to be diligent about adapting their fuel price management strategy in order to quickly react to the constant changes in their fuel markets. One example I gave is how fuel retailers are adapting fuel rewards programs, allowing them to gain market share without having to adjust their fuel price management strategy.
Today Kroger announced the expansion of their fuel and grocery reward program to 48 Shell stations in the Roanoake Valley and Lynchburg areas of Virginia. Customers accumulate points on their Kroger loyalty cards when they purchase groceries, and points can be used for cash discounts at the pump.
Carl York, a spokesman for Kroger’s mid-Atlantic region office in Roanoke said “Fuel is definitely important to us. We’ve learned that it’s a nice fit with the grocery business. We can drive grocery sales by providing fuel centers. This partnership with Shell allows us to have a bigger footprint to make our fuel promotion more impactful”.
This is another example of the volatility in the fuel market. Fuel Price Managers who compete against Kroger need to carefully monitor the impact this reward strategy has on the market. As we all know, consumers love a fuel bargain, and they will travel out of their way to cash in their discounts. Competing c-stores may need to adjust their fuel prices down to minimize any loss of market share.
by John Keller | Aug 12, 2010 | Customer News, Industry News, PriceAdvantage
Convenience Store Decisions picked Rutters as their winner of the 2010 Convenience Store Chain Of The Year award. Rutter’s is the second consecutive chain under 100 stores to receive the award, emphasizing that it’s not the size of the chain that matters, rather the quality of its offering. Rutter’s has evolved from small town player to industry leader and has impacted the way the industry does business, especially in the area of technology. President and CEO Scott Hartman has emerged as an industry leader instrumental in pushing technology standards that allow convenience retailers to compete more effectively with supermarkets and mass merchandisers.
“Retailers are under enormous pressure as they battle depressed margins, unprecedented competition and high credit card processing fees both in store and at the pump,” said Tom McIntyre, group publisher of The Convenience Store Decisions Group. “The purpose of the Chain of the Year Award is to showcase the best of the best in convenience retailing and Rutter’s certainly meets that definition.”
Skyline Products is proud to have Rutter’s as a PriceAdvantage customer for over five years.
by John Keller | Apr 5, 2010 | Customer News
As reported in Convenience Store News, Sheetz customers are actively involved in promoting Sheetz via social network sites and even YouTube:
Three young men created a video that is over three minutes long. They created the video with their own footage, and a soundtrack where they wrote the lyrics and performed the song.
The video includes not only segments of them strutting around the c-store, but eating their made to order sandwiches, and pumping gas.
Once again, the customer loyalty displayed by Sheetz is quite impressive.
View the original Convenience Store News article here.
by John Keller | Mar 10, 2010 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology
According to Convenience Store News, the SPINX convenience store chain has acquired ten more c-stores. All ten stores are located in South Carolina, and will be re-branded to the SPINX name. With this acquisition, SPINX now owns and operates 74 c-stores.
Spinx has been effectively utilizing the PriceAdvantage fuel pricing software solution from Skyline Products to optimize their fuel prices in each market, and rapidly push fuel prices to the street from their headquarters office. The SPINX implementation includes pushing fuel prices to the sign.
The Convenience Store News article may be found here.
by John Keller | Oct 16, 2009 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management, Fuel Price Optimization
Skyline Products has recently completed a pilot program, using patent pending PriceAdvantageTM software to help Sheetz reduce costs and markedly increase available customer selling time.
Mark Wilson, Director of Store Support for Sheetz, was able to achieve these results with Skyline’s patent pending PriceAdvantage software. Wilson piloted the software in 10 stores and changed only two things: 1) the ability to manage and reset electronic price signs remotely from headquarters or from within the store, and 2) the ability to remotely manage prices on the electronic price signs.
These two improvements translated into forecasted annual savings of $141,000 in service maintenance, and will increase available store manager face time with customers by up to 50 hours annually per store, across 360 stores.
“The software gave us all of that in a usable, understandable, teachable and trainable package,” Wilson says. “The smarter the systems are that we place in the stores, the better information we have at headquarters. That’s what we look for in technology today. “
“This is just one example of the tremendous return on investment that we see our customers experiencing regularly with PriceAdvantage. The payback time for the software is short, and the benefits drive directly to top line revenue and profitability.” said Greg Stadjuhar, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Skyline Products.
Future plans at Sheetz include expanding the pilot program across all 360 stores, and integrating technologies which will allow headquarters to remotely update fuel pricing in the field at the POS, the pump, and the Skyline Electronic Price Display—all from their desktop computer, laptop, or handheld device.
by John Keller | Mar 15, 2007 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Technology, PriceAdvantage
Skyline Products, long known for its high-quality electronic price displays, announces the installation of its newest product, PriceAdvantage™ Central Control Fuel Pricing Software, at pilot sites of Royal Farms, Inc. of Baltimore, Md. The revolutionary, patent-pending software allows petroleum marketers at corporate headquarters to remotely update fuel pricing in the field at the POS system, the pump, and the Skyline Electronic Price Display—all from their computer, laptop, and PDA.
“Using PriceAdvantage, our customers can remotely execute their individual fuel pricing strategy per store, per grade in real-time,” comments Greg Stadjuhar, Skyline Products vice president of sales and marketing. “Some have called this ‘pricing nirvana.’ With today’s market volatility, companies can no longer solely rely on the store manager to change the price, collect the competitive data and confirm the changes were made. According to OPIS from 2005 to present, the average retailer changes fuel prices five or more times per week. PriceAdvantage enables savvy petroleum marketers, like Royal Farms, the ability to instantly react to competitive market changes from anywhere and confirm—with absolute certainty—that the changes occurred. The ROI is very compelling when new price generation and implementation can be reduced to minutes, which for most operators would formerly take hours.”
PriceAdvantage automates the three major components of a typical fuel-pricing process: competitive data collection, analysis, and price implementation at the store. Recent competitive price changes are available real-time via electronic updates from either an in-store, touch-screen input device by store personnel; web applications providing third-party data sources, like OPIS and GasBuddy; or back-office imports. Fuel managers can set up customizable pricing rules against which new competitive data is evaluated (e.g. “maintain Store A’s unleaded, mid, premium fuels at one cent below primary competitor”). Updates to fuel pricing can then be sent instantly to the site’s POS system, the dispenser, and the Skyline Electronic Price Display—freeing store managers to focus on customer service. By integrating with back-office accounting systems, like PDI, PriceAdvantage also includes easy-to-use pricing analysis tools to enable the pricing managers to determine price points at which store profitability is maximized.
Rob Rinehart, Royal Farms director of gasoline trading, says, “The PriceAdvantage pilot program has given us the opportunity to test-drive the product on a limited basis and to evaluate its benefits. With PriceAdvantage in place, I know the competitors’ prices within seconds of a change. I can fine-tune our prices instantly, and I receive immediate confirmation that the changes occurred. We’re seeing the positive impact on gross margins already and the pilot program has proven to be cost-effective. We are now in process of implementing the PriceAdvantage solution at all of our store locations in 2007.”
Says Stadjuhar, “No other fuel pricing software product on the market provides certified integration between the POS, the pump and the electronic sign, while automating fuel-pricing control at the central office. It’s long overdue, and it’s a recipe for a chain’s success in today’s highly volatile and margin-thin market.”
