Page 92 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

42 GET THE LAYOUT RIGHT

In retail, there is a popular (and not entirely unjustified) view
that the key success factor is the buying. Good buyers ensure that
the right products are available in the right quantities at the right
price—so that customers can find what they want at what they will
regard as bargain prices.

Buying has, however, become so sophisticated that all major retailers
have top-flight buyers who are all able to meet the success criteria.
Major retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda show relatively
small differences between them in terms of what they stock and
how much it costs: the only way left for these firms to compete is by
cutting their already narrow profit margins even further.

The idea

Morrisons supermarket chain has come from (apparently) nowhere
to challenge the majors. There are many things that Morrisons
does not do as well as Tesco or Sainsbury’s (for example, they have
simplified their buying by keeping it central, and therefore the
stores have a strong Northern element in the products on offer,
without any allowance for regional products). Their prices are much
the same, and if anything their range of products is less.

What Morrisons does do well, though, is have an exceptionally
pleasant store layout. Morrisons calls this the “Market Street” layout:
the stores are arranged like a traditional early twentieth-century
street market around the edge of the store, with conventional aisles
in the middle. For example, most stores have a pie shop where a bell
is rung each time a fresh batch of pies comes out of the oven.

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