Marketing Tactics

Your employees interact with customers every single day, and if they're not providing excellent service, your shoppers won’t return

At the junction of Highway 83 and Provincial Road 257 in Virden, Man. is a c-store, car wash and petroleum site called White Owl Convenience. Wayne Rudneski, who owns three White Owl locations with his brother, has been in the c-retail business since the 1970s. This retailer is known to spend 15 hours in his store every day – dedication which he believes gives him an advantage over his competitors...

Photos by Brandon Gray Since Manny Kang was a teenager, he’s taken great pride in caring for cars.

Consumers are often looking for something quick to tide them over between meals, and the c-store is often the go-to destination to fill this need. Retailers can build on the excitement around bestselling snacks like potato chips, tortilla chips and nuts by also stocking innovation that captures emerging trends.

The convenience-gas industry has been advocating togetherness, and two associations are taking a major step toward establishing this unity. The National Convenience Stores Distributors Association (NACDA) and the Canadian Convenience Stores Association (CCSA) are combining their industry events...

Think of any positive shopping experience you’ve had. Its success was likely a result of how easily you found what you were looking for and how long it took to make the purchase. This may seem like retailing 101, but being efficient is an increasingly difficult task in the convenience-gas channel, where customers are extremely time-pressed, and new SKUs constantly flood the market. But one key merchandising tool offers retailers a surefire way to simplify the in-store environment: planograms.

The key message from the 10th anniversary Convenience U CARWACS Show at Toronto’s International Centre March 5 and 6 was that everyone in the industry has a stake in ensuring that retailers give customers the best possible in-store experience. Without customer loyalty, independent, banner and chain retailers alike will have a hard time competing with other formats...

Where constantly changing is the name of the game, Ray White is a perfect example of a retailer who doesn’t hesitate to make changes to his Agassiz, BC video and convenience store. Until a year and a half ago, MovieSource Convenience & Video was focused primarily on video. But when video stores lost steam and White noticed consumer demand shifting, he converted completely to a convenience store and turned his attention to improving his in-store environment with point-of-sale materials.