by John Keller | Aug 30, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News
For eight years, CSNews has been recognizing the most innovative convenience store chains in the industry with the annual CSNews design awards. This year these CSNews awards include four PriceAdvantage customers: CST Brands, Cruizers, High’s, and Parker’s.
The CST Brands store in Harris County Texas won Best Interior Design. CST Brands (formerly known as Valero) uses PriceAdvantage as their retail fuel software for all their company-owned stores across the United States. The CST Brands fuel price management solution includes fuel price optimization, an integration with GasBuddy OpenStore, and roundtrip price change confirmation to the VeriFone POS and Skyline electronic price signs.
Cruizers won Honorable Mention for a remodel in Raleigh North Carolina. The Cruizers implementation of PriceAdvantage is in the cloud and includes roundtrip price change confirmation to the Gilbarco Passport POS.
High’s won Best Mid-Budget Remodel for their project completed in Edgewater Maryland. High’s uses PriceAdvantage as their retail fuel software across all their stores with complete price change confirmation to the VeriFone and NCR Radiant POS systems.
Parker’s won Best Fountain Presentation for their store in Garden City Georgia. The Parker’s implementation of PriceAdvantage fuel software is also in the cloud, and includes roundtrip price change confirmation to the VeriFone POS and Skyline electronic price signs. The Parker’s solution also includes an integration to GasBuddy OpenStore.
All four of these PriceAdvantage award winners have their fuel price software solution integrated with PDI.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have such industry innovators as partners, and we’d like to offer our congratulations to all of them.
by John Keller | Aug 28, 2013 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software, Industry News
According to AAA, there will be a 4.3% increase in Americans driving 50 miles or more from home this Labor Day holiday. That means between Thursday and Monday we can expect to see more travelers than any year since the recession. The number of Americans driving 50 miles or more is expected to reach 29.2 million, up from 28 million last year.
From a fuel price management perspective, when comparing this year’s numbers to last year’s, it’s important to monitor fuel volumes compared to the same days of week last year, not same date, in order to make sure you are getting your share of the increased pie this weekend. Strategies may including sitting with slightly higher margins in order to make the most of the weekend, in the face of increased traffic. Or they may include going for volume to make up for lost opportunities earlier in the year.
The key takeaway is to be prepared with best-in-class fuel pricing software to make quick pricing adjustments as needed, in order to maximize the great opportunity this weekend provides. Oh, and on a personal note, it’s best to have access to this fuel pricing software insight from a mobile device so you can have some fun this weekend, too.
by Grant Garrison | Aug 26, 2013 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Software, PriceAdvantage
Everybody’s out there looking for pennies: Fuel customers are using mobile apps and will make challenging left turns for the promise of saving just a few pennies on a fill-up. Amid this, fuel retailers look for ways to wring a few pennies of profit from the sale. It’s a game won or lost on small increments, and folks on both sides of the counter know that those pennies add up.
In the past few years, discovering the “sweet spot” that brings customers off the street and grows fuel sale volume and profit has become easier. OPIS- and PDI-integrated tools let everybody from single-store operators to chains with hundreds of locations quickly access real-time competitive data. With a click, they can know which stores or regions are underperforming. They can easily see where they’re making the most or least money and where their pricing is getting beat by competitors down the street or miles away.
Real-time insight into volume, margin, and gallon performance gives leaders the ammunition they need to formulate an agile pricing strategy—on a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. But that’s only half the battle. That price now has to go to every POS, pump, and sign in every store. And the longer it takes the more money you lose.
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by John Keller | Aug 2, 2013 | Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Price Optimization, Retail Fuel Margins
OPIS reported this week that average retail fuel margins across the US added to the gains of last week and increased by $0.038 to $0.214 per gallon. That makes for an $0.114 increase from just two weeks ago when retail fuel margins were at an abysmal $0.100 per gallon.
Though the increase in margins this week did not bring retail fuel averages to the levels of July 5 when margins were at the highest level of the year at $0.302 per gallon, the increase did raise year to date margins to $0.178 and the Q2 average to $0.193. The six week margin average stands at a strong $0.206 per gallon.
Considering the prediction for increased retail fuel prices by many industry analysts, margins this week didn’t suffer by any such retail fuel price rise. Hopefully retail fuel prices can remain steady throughout the summer and make for a profitable season.
by John Keller | Jul 24, 2013 | Fuel Price Management, Fuel Pricing Technology, Industry News
A new Mobile Path to Purchase study based on a survey from 2000 US smart phone and tablet users reinforces the importance of fuel retailers keeping their retail fuel prices current on mobile gas price sites. Gas was the answer given for the type of search by 90% of smartphone users and 87% of tablet users who were asked why did they go to the location to make a purchase. Gas price and location were the key elements of these mobile search conversions.
Industry leader xAd and long-time partner and call measurement provider Telmetrics have partnered to release first-to-market Mobile Path-to-Purchase research studies conducted by The Nielsen Company. The studies dissect consumer mobile usage and purchase behavior related to the Travel, Restaurant, Auto, Retail, Insurance, Banking & Finance and Gas & Convenience industry verticals.
The results of these studies provide valuable insights into the mobile tools utilized in the process of research and decision, and strong mobile user intent to purchase.
“Mobile is the dominant media used in this on-the-go [gas and convenience] category and while searchers are making most decisions within an hour, they are paying attention to advertising and taking time to conduct price and location searches,” said Monica Ho, vice president of marketing at xAd.
The gas and convenience retail category has nearly a 90% conversion rate for mobile users who ultimately make a purchase. “With some of the heaviest app usage and highest conversion rates we’ve seen in our Mobile Path-to-Purchase research series, it is important that gas and convenience advertisers work with marketing providers that ensure their businesses can be found in apps in addition to mobile sites,” said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics. “Advertisers have a chance to drive more purchases by ensuring their mobile presence is optimized with location and pricing [information].”
From a fuel price management perspective, this study drives home the point that publishing fuel prices to the “virtual signs” on the web is critical for bringing more traffic to the store. The patented PriceAdvantage SMART fuel pricing solution provides the ability to publish gas prices to OPIS and GasBuddy so that stores appear on the gas price search apps, and display the proper prices to the mobile audience.
by John Keller | Jul 23, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software
The PriceAdvantage team would like to welcome Vintners Distributors as the latest member of our partner family. Vintners Distributors selected the patented PriceAdvantage fuel price management solution to replace their third party fuels price management and optimization solution that is going away.
The Vintners Distributors fuel software solution will integrate PriceAdvantage with PDI running on the back office, and Gilbarco Passport and VeriFone Sapphire POS systems at the stores, to provide true closed loop fuel price management with confirmation. This implementation will again be a hosted fuel software solution in the cloud.
Vintners Distributors is based in Fremont, California and operates c-stores across the state of California.
