6 ms·

Why would you want your grocery store on social media? I don't understand the world anymore.

olympus 11y ago
While it does sound silly for a grocery store to have a facebook page, several stores make good use of facebook/twitter/etc to offer coupons and encourage people to go to their store. My mom and sister are the primary shoppers in their families and they are heavily influenced by which stores are offering deals. So it's not really about getting likes and "engaging" with customers, it's more of a delivery vehicle that allows you to have a targeted audience-- nobody is going to the Kroeger grocery store facebook page because they like them, they are specifically going for coupons and that audience becomes a known quantity.
- acdha 11y ago
  I think this also illustrates why Trader Joe's doesn't need to – most grocery store chains are pure commodity businesses, where the average shopper could do most of their shopping at any of the stores and will pick the store either because it's the closest or due to a coupon. Trader Joe's doesn't isn't as sensitive to that because they sell a bunch of products which are their own brands or not commonly carried by traditional supermarkets. Coupons and sales are still useful but far less critical because odds are you'll be stopping by anyway.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    I understood that "their own brand" was rebranded/repackaged commodity product. Their 'own pasta' is the same as Aldis but with "Trader Joe's Own" printed on the label. Think about it: they're not a food manufacturer. They can't actually make anything.
    - cwyers 11y ago
      Not just that. Lots of their stuff is the same as national brands. All of the Trader Joe's hard ciders are made by the people who make Woodchuck. I think their Joe's Os and mac and cheese are made by Annie's. So, you're right, but at the same time, I think your typical Trader Joe's shopper would rather have what TJ repackages than what most other stores do. (Also, Aldis and Trader Joes also have the same corporate parent, sort of, so it makes sense that they share suppliers for stuff.)
      - germanier 11y ago
        Actually they don't share the same parent company, they just both happen[1] to have the exact same name "Aldi Einkauf GmbH & Compagnie, oHG". To differentiate they are usually called Aldi Nord (owner of Trader Joe's) and Aldi Süd (owner of US Aldi). Although they cooperate closely (and therefore seen as one entity by the antitrust authorities) they are legally, financially, and organizationally completely seperate. [1]: They split up in 1960 for unknown reasons (it's speculated that it was a dispute about selling cigarettes). They only have stores in the north and south of Germany respectively, hence the geographic names. They also divided the rest of the world between them with the US being the only other country in which both operate.
        cwyers 11y ago
        I did say sort of for that reason. What I was told, and I have no idea if this is true, is that Aldi split in half so each of the owner's sons could have a company -- Theo Albrecht does run Aldi Nord and Trader Joe's and his brother Karl owns Aldi Sud and the US Aldi's chain.
        germanier 11y ago
        They took over the company from their mother n 1945 and split it in 1961, a year after their parents gave them the remaining shares. The exact reason for the split is unknown and there has been much speculation about that. Both brothers died a few years ago but the companies are still run by their families.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      Absolutely. It's just like Apple. They don't own a single factory, so they can't actually make anything. In reality, there are contract food manufacturers in the same way that Foxconn is a contract phone manufacturer: http://www.contractmfgdirectory.com/ http://www.contractmfgdirectory.com/ I don't know how much of Trader Joe's stuff is contract manufacturing to TJs specifications versus TJs selecting already existing products and buying more of the same. My guess is that it's mostly existing products. But their house wine is custom made for them, so it's definitely not all commodity. And given the scale they work at, I'm sure the line's a bit blurry; a manufacturer who is nominally making a particular thing can certainly afford to make changes to get TJ's business. Personally, I don't care much how much they "really" make. Trader Joe's is valuable to me mainly because of their editorial judgement. In a normal supermarket, the supermarket is selling a bunch of stuff of unknown quality. Trader Joe's is basically vouching for everything. As a bonus, I don't have to pay for a lot of irritating marketing. And best of all for me, their store is filled with smart, effective staff. At Safeway, I can spend 10 minutes of a 20-minute visit wandering around trying to find things. If I can find a staff member to ask, they often won't know any better than me. At Trader Joe's, it's just the opposite; somebody's always around, and they can answer almost any question I throw at them.
    - acdha 11y ago
      I'm aware that they don't manufacture the items themselves – I actually have an uncle who started one of their California suppliers. The key detail you left out is that they still specify the requirements for what they'll buy – it's not like they're buying mac & cheese from Kraft and putting it in a new box, the product is made using a different recipe for a different price point. Theoretically, yes, the supermarkets could stock equivalent quality products at similar price points but in practice there are whole categories where Trader Joe's moves a ton of product because they stock a grade up in quality from what every supermarket in town chooses to stock while still being less expensive than Whole Foods or specialty markets.
      - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Still more expensive that the local grocery. And not always worth it. Not hardly. Unless the service is what you want. Then I'd rather spend that for a massage or to have my lawn mowed. I can figure out where stuff is in my local grocery myself.
        acdha 11y ago
        > Still more expensive that the local grocery. And not always worth it. This very much depends on what you're buying and where. I've lived in San Diego, New Haven, and Washington DC and we've found that Trader Joe's is significantly (30-200%) cheaper than buying at our local markets for many categories — cheese other than cheddar or jack, nuts if you buy anything other than planter's peanuts, non-Hershey's chocolate, etc. The common factor is that grocery stores are brutally competitive on certain key commodities – e.g. a gallon of milk or a bunch of bananas – and make most of their profit on niche products, prepared foods, etc. If you buy the higher-volume products at any given store, you're likely to get a better price than buying the same item from a different store. That's why Whole Foods is often cheaper for organic products since they don't sell e.g. non-organic eggs but Safeway treats those as a luxury good.
roymurdock 11y ago
This is explained in the article: Aldi is happy to dole out recognition to individuals who want to engage with it, playing the attention game where consumer praise is awarded with publicity from the Aldi feed. The consumer endorses the brand, and in turn the brand validates the consumer. The opportunities for this quasi-reciprocal participation in brands is presumed to catalyze customer loyalty. Some people like to share their appreciation through social media. It can also be nice to know that the company that you patronize has responsive staff monitoring public conversations to service your needs. I think you can understand that, you just don't see the value in it, which is fair enough because I don't either. That's probably one of the (subconscious) reasons I shop at TJ's - decent food at a great price, and no marketing BS that detracts from my experience with the brand.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Surely no marketing bullshit is part of their marketing bullshit.
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    Well yes, the absence of something can be considered something in its own right. There's probably a more eloquent way to put that but it escapes me at the moment.
    - bad-joke 11y ago
      "Say little and do much." - Pirkei Avot
    - bmm6o 11y ago
      There's a story who's details I can't recall well enough to even google for that's relevant here... There was a philosopher (Sartre?) who was to meet his friend at a cafe in Paris. His friend was late, and as the philosopher sat drinking coffee and waiting, he realized that his friend's absence was present, and this this absence was different from the absence of all the other people who also weren't at the cafe.
  - deleted 11y ago
Finnucane 11y ago
Yeah, srsly, who's sitting there thinking, "you know what I want from social media? _More advertising_. I'm not seeing enough advertising on the Internet. Can I have some spam in my twitter feed, please?"
- hullo 11y ago
  Literally hundreds of millions of people. McDonalds alone has 62 million followers on Facebook. If half of the people on Facebook or Twitter follow a brand, that's over a half billion.
  - mtberatwork 11y ago
    I have to assume at least a good chunk of those followers did so in order to enter some promotional, giveaway event. But even if we assume half did so to win something and account for bots, that's still millions of people who voluntarily decided to follow a fast-food chain. I'm with the grandparent, I just don't get it.
golergka 11y ago
Twitter is often the fastest way to contact support in many companies.

While it does sound silly for a grocery store to have a facebook page, several stores make good use of facebook/twitter/etc to offer coupons and encourage people to go to their store. My mom and sister are the primary shoppers in their families and they are heavily influenced by which stores are offering deals. So it's not really about getting likes and "engaging" with customers, it's more of a delivery vehicle that allows you to have a targeted audience-- nobody is going to the Kroeger grocery store facebook page because they like them, they are specifically going for coupons and that audience becomes a known quantity.

acdha 11y ago
I think this also illustrates why Trader Joe's doesn't need to – most grocery store chains are pure commodity businesses, where the average shopper could do most of their shopping at any of the stores and will pick the store either because it's the closest or due to a coupon. Trader Joe's doesn't isn't as sensitive to that because they sell a bunch of products which are their own brands or not commonly carried by traditional supermarkets. Coupons and sales are still useful but far less critical because odds are you'll be stopping by anyway.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  I understood that "their own brand" was rebranded/repackaged commodity product. Their 'own pasta' is the same as Aldis but with "Trader Joe's Own" printed on the label. Think about it: they're not a food manufacturer. They can't actually make anything.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    Not just that. Lots of their stuff is the same as national brands. All of the Trader Joe's hard ciders are made by the people who make Woodchuck. I think their Joe's Os and mac and cheese are made by Annie's. So, you're right, but at the same time, I think your typical Trader Joe's shopper would rather have what TJ repackages than what most other stores do. (Also, Aldis and Trader Joes also have the same corporate parent, sort of, so it makes sense that they share suppliers for stuff.)
    - germanier 11y ago
      Actually they don't share the same parent company, they just both happen[1] to have the exact same name "Aldi Einkauf GmbH & Compagnie, oHG". To differentiate they are usually called Aldi Nord (owner of Trader Joe's) and Aldi Süd (owner of US Aldi). Although they cooperate closely (and therefore seen as one entity by the antitrust authorities) they are legally, financially, and organizationally completely seperate. [1]: They split up in 1960 for unknown reasons (it's speculated that it was a dispute about selling cigarettes). They only have stores in the north and south of Germany respectively, hence the geographic names. They also divided the rest of the world between them with the US being the only other country in which both operate.
      - cwyers 11y ago
        I did say sort of for that reason. What I was told, and I have no idea if this is true, is that Aldi split in half so each of the owner's sons could have a company -- Theo Albrecht does run Aldi Nord and Trader Joe's and his brother Karl owns Aldi Sud and the US Aldi's chain.
        germanier 11y ago
        They took over the company from their mother n 1945 and split it in 1961, a year after their parents gave them the remaining shares. The exact reason for the split is unknown and there has been much speculation about that. Both brothers died a few years ago but the companies are still run by their families.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    Absolutely. It's just like Apple. They don't own a single factory, so they can't actually make anything. In reality, there are contract food manufacturers in the same way that Foxconn is a contract phone manufacturer: http://www.contractmfgdirectory.com/ http://www.contractmfgdirectory.com/ I don't know how much of Trader Joe's stuff is contract manufacturing to TJs specifications versus TJs selecting already existing products and buying more of the same. My guess is that it's mostly existing products. But their house wine is custom made for them, so it's definitely not all commodity. And given the scale they work at, I'm sure the line's a bit blurry; a manufacturer who is nominally making a particular thing can certainly afford to make changes to get TJ's business. Personally, I don't care much how much they "really" make. Trader Joe's is valuable to me mainly because of their editorial judgement. In a normal supermarket, the supermarket is selling a bunch of stuff of unknown quality. Trader Joe's is basically vouching for everything. As a bonus, I don't have to pay for a lot of irritating marketing. And best of all for me, their store is filled with smart, effective staff. At Safeway, I can spend 10 minutes of a 20-minute visit wandering around trying to find things. If I can find a staff member to ask, they often won't know any better than me. At Trader Joe's, it's just the opposite; somebody's always around, and they can answer almost any question I throw at them.
  - acdha 11y ago
    I'm aware that they don't manufacture the items themselves – I actually have an uncle who started one of their California suppliers. The key detail you left out is that they still specify the requirements for what they'll buy – it's not like they're buying mac & cheese from Kraft and putting it in a new box, the product is made using a different recipe for a different price point. Theoretically, yes, the supermarkets could stock equivalent quality products at similar price points but in practice there are whole categories where Trader Joe's moves a ton of product because they stock a grade up in quality from what every supermarket in town chooses to stock while still being less expensive than Whole Foods or specialty markets.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Still more expensive that the local grocery. And not always worth it. Not hardly. Unless the service is what you want. Then I'd rather spend that for a massage or to have my lawn mowed. I can figure out where stuff is in my local grocery myself.
      - acdha 11y ago
        > Still more expensive that the local grocery. And not always worth it. This very much depends on what you're buying and where. I've lived in San Diego, New Haven, and Washington DC and we've found that Trader Joe's is significantly (30-200%) cheaper than buying at our local markets for many categories — cheese other than cheddar or jack, nuts if you buy anything other than planter's peanuts, non-Hershey's chocolate, etc. The common factor is that grocery stores are brutally competitive on certain key commodities – e.g. a gallon of milk or a bunch of bananas – and make most of their profit on niche products, prepared foods, etc. If you buy the higher-volume products at any given store, you're likely to get a better price than buying the same item from a different store. That's why Whole Foods is often cheaper for organic products since they don't sell e.g. non-organic eggs but Safeway treats those as a luxury good.

roymurdock 11y ago

This is explained in the article: Aldi is happy to dole out recognition to individuals who want to engage with it, playing the attention game where consumer praise is awarded with publicity from the Aldi feed. The consumer endorses the brand, and in turn the brand validates the consumer. The opportunities for this quasi-reciprocal participation in brands is presumed to catalyze customer loyalty. Some people like to share their appreciation through social media. It can also be nice to know that the company that you patronize has responsive staff monitoring public conversations to service your needs. I think you can understand that, you just don't see the value in it, which is fair enough because I don't either. That's probably one of the (subconscious) reasons I shop at TJ's - decent food at a great price, and no marketing BS that detracts from my experience with the brand.

EliRivers 11y ago
Surely no marketing bullshit is part of their marketing bullshit.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Well yes, the absence of something can be considered something in its own right. There's probably a more eloquent way to put that but it escapes me at the moment.
  - bad-joke 11y ago
    "Say little and do much." - Pirkei Avot
  - bmm6o 11y ago
    There's a story who's details I can't recall well enough to even google for that's relevant here... There was a philosopher (Sartre?) who was to meet his friend at a cafe in Paris. His friend was late, and as the philosopher sat drinking coffee and waiting, he realized that his friend's absence was present, and this this absence was different from the absence of all the other people who also weren't at the cafe.
- deleted 11y ago

Finnucane 11y ago

Yeah, srsly, who's sitting there thinking, "you know what I want from social media? _More advertising_. I'm not seeing enough advertising on the Internet. Can I have some spam in my twitter feed, please?"

hullo 11y ago
Literally hundreds of millions of people. McDonalds alone has 62 million followers on Facebook. If half of the people on Facebook or Twitter follow a brand, that's over a half billion.
- mtberatwork 11y ago
  I have to assume at least a good chunk of those followers did so in order to enter some promotional, giveaway event. But even if we assume half did so to win something and account for bots, that's still millions of people who voluntarily decided to follow a fast-food chain. I'm with the grandparent, I just don't get it.

golergka 11y ago

Twitter is often the fastest way to contact support in many companies.