Consumer, Automobile, and Supermaket

I have lived at Princeton for four days. I am very OK.

On the day of arrival, I went to Wegmans, the supermarket which the girl at Starbucks on Nassau Street recommended, to buy vegetables, meat, eggs, salt, vinegar, oil, soy sauce, bread, cheese, detergent, shampoo, hair conditioner, and so on. According to the information on the web, it seems that Wegmans is competing with Whole Foods Market to attract relatively wealthy health conscious consumers. I like Wegmans. Whole Foods is too fashionable for me.

I went to Wegmans BY TAXI and to Whole Foods BY RENTAL CAR. In Japan, I visited supermarkets BY WALK. But in US, without car, you can't do anything. I know it before the arrival, but I really feel so from bottom of my heart. It seems that this difference on transportation system each society has constitute different consumer behavior and retailers' strategy.

In US, the society everybody uses or is forced to use cars, the trading area of supermarkets is relatively wide, and therefore, people go there not so frequently (eg. once a week or two). In this case, supermarket attract consumers with Everyday Low Pricing because they cannot visit stores so often. Keeping price stable establishes consumers' store loyalty.

On the contrary, in Japan, the society other transformation like train, bus, and subway are used often, the trading area of supermarket is relatively narrow, and therefore, people can go there frequently (eg. almost everyday). Retailers attract consumers with High Low Pricing. Changing price motivate consumers to visit there and the convenience of one stop shopping force consumers buy not only buy low margin products but also high margin products. This margin mix tactics is also used in US, it works well in Japan.

Of course, I know that this typification is too simplistic. For example, Japanese living in suburb or rural area visit supermarkets by car. In addition, we can't affirm that transportation system is the only factor to establish consumer behavior and retailers' strategy. We must consider other factors and different causal relationship. Especially we should focus our attention on the influence of consumer behavior on retailers' strategy and vice verse.

Although this typology has some problems, we can explain why foregin retail giants such as Carrfour and Walmart failured in Japanese market. Their store manegement didn't fit consumers' needs at all. They want to and CAN visit supermarket frequently and enjoy hunting price-cut product. To understand it, we may be more careful about the institutional complementarity among transportation system, consumer behavior, retailers' strategy and other factors.

Anyway, visiting supermaket is great fun for me.

Hi

Hi. I am Takeshi Matsui. I am a researcher and a teacher of marketing, consumer behavior, and consumer culture at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, Japan. I will enjoy my sabbatical year from August 15 at Department of Sociology in Princeton University. I will stay there about one or one and half year to complete and publish my previous research in English/Japanese and start new research project on the influence of Japanese consumer culture in US society. This is my first stay in a foreign county. On this blog, I will keep a diary during LIVING IN AMERICA. I will write anything that I'm interested in from the point of view of a Japanese consumer and/or a researcher of consumer culture. HIT ME!


Living In America - James Brown