This shows that most people spend between £50-£100 each week at a supermarket. This question can be related to the size of their family because the more people in their family, the more money they will spend.
The sixth question I asked was “Why do you chose to shop at your chosen supermarket?” The response was very mixed. The most popular answer was quality of good with 5 people saying this. 2 people said locality and prices and 1 person said service.
The answers weren’t what I expected them to be. I expected locality to be the most popular answer because most people use Tesco and that is the nearest supermarket to where I live.
The following question that I asked was “How many people live in your house?” 3 people was the most popular answer with 5 of my respondents saying this, the least popular answer was 5 and 1 people in a house, one person answered this. These answers will be linked to the weekly amount of money spent in supermarkets question because the more people you have in your family the larger amount of you will need to spend at supermarkets.
The following question I asked was, “What is your yearly house income?” The response again, was very mixed. The most popular answer was £40000-£60000 with 4 people answering this. The least popular answers were £1-£20000 and £80000+. 2 people said they earned £60000-£80000 and 2 people said they earned £20000-£40000.
The ninth question that I asked was “Does your supermarket offer a delivery service?” 7 people said that it does and 3 people said that it doesn’t. This shows that the majority of supermarkets offer a delivery system service.
The next question I asked was “If your supermarket does offer a delivery service, then do you use it?” 1 person replied with yes and 9 people replied with no. This shows that the majority of people don’t use the delivery system.
The following question I asked was “Does your supermarket offer a loyalty card?” 7 people said yes and 3 people said no. This shows that the majority of supermarkets offer a loyalty card.
Next, I posed the question “If your supermarket does have a loyalty card did it attract you to your chosen supermarket?” 3 people said yes and 7 people said no. This shows that the majority of people weren’t attracted by the loyalty card on offer.
The penultimate question I asked was “What type of food do you mainly buy from your supermarket?” 3 people said premium, 2 people said own brand and 5 people said they bought branded goods.
The final question I asked was “How do you travel to your supermarket? Ten out of ten people that I asked said they travel by car to their supermarket.
Conclusion and Recommendations
From my questionnaire, I can conclude many things. The most popular supermarket among my respondents was Tesco. This was probably because it is the nearest supermarket to where I based my questionnaire. If the smaller supermarkets wanted to gain some popularity in the Euxton area then I would suggest that they build a new supermarket in this area, or buy an existing building in Euxton.
I also found out that the most popular reason for shopping at their chosen supermarket was the quality of goods. All of the people who said that quality of goods attracted them most shopped at Tesco or Sainsbury's. This shows that Tesco and Sainsbury's generally offer good quality goods, this has increased their popularity. If other smaller supermarkets wanted to gain a larger share of the market I would advise them to improve the quality of goods. This would attract more people and give them a better reputation. It would also attract the higher earners with bigger families, this would mean they would spend more each time they went shopping.
The second most popular answer for this question was locality. The locality of supermarkets in certain areas seems to be a big influence to where people shop. If the less successful supermarkets were to build or buy more supermarkets in suburban areas they would get much more business.
Advertising is a big issue in a supermarkets success. If your supermarket is well advertised more people will know about it and will try it out. Advertising of special offers is very effective. If people see a certain limited special offer, it may encourage them to take advantage of it and visit the supermarket. My research will help them decide on who to target the advertisement towards.
Most of the people that I asked said that the supermarket they used offered an internet delivery service, however only one out of the ten people I asked said that they used it. If the supermarkets that offered this service wanted people to gain more interest in it I would suggest that they advertise it more, or perhaps lower the price of the delivery.
It seems that most supermarkets offer a loyalty card, however the majority of people that I asked weren't attracted to the loyalty card on offer. Some of the people owned one but they thought it was a money making scheme. Some people find them annoying because they make shopping more complicated and the cost of running the scheme must be added to the cost of the goods in the shop. From this research I can suggest that supermarkets would stop the loyalty card and reduce the price of goods in the shop.
Include in my questionnaire was the question, "What type of food do you buy from your supermarket?" The most popular answer was branded goods. I think that this has influenced Tesco and Sainsbury's success, as they sell many different goods. When I did my price survey I noticed that the smaller supermarkets like Aldi didn’t sell the popular branded goods e.g. Walkers, Coca-Cola and Heinz. Perhaps if they started to sell more of these popular branded goods and less own brand goods they would get more interest and a better reputation for selling high quality goods. Saying this, this would affect the price of goods and they may loose their reputation as "Budget Supermarkets".
The final question I asked in the questionnaire was "How do you travel to your supermarket?" All ten people replied with 'car'. Therefore, if a supermarket was planning to spend some money on the access to the supermarket I would recommend that they spend the money on easy access for cars or extend the car park, rather than investing in something like a cycle track, shuttle bus or improved foot access. They could also invest in disabled or mother and baby parking facilities.
I hope that my recommendation influence decisions made by supermarkets in the future.
