Blog Post
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Building strong community relationships
As supermarkets look to build connections with local shoppers, they should support the community pillars that customers have identified as most important.
Supermarkets serve a unique role in their communities. By offering a variety of necessary products that customers want and need, they act as an important part of a community’s ecosystem.
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in providing adequate supermarket access to communities who may be categorized as food deserts, or areas with limited access to healthy and affordable food.
There are many ways supermarkets can better serve as active partners within their communities by supporting what customers identify as important pillars. The newest study from the Coca‑Cola Retailing Research Council, Sustainability and Food Retailing, focuses on efforts around sustainability; however, the shoppers interviewed for the study identified a much wider range of issues in which supermarkets should be involved.
For example, shoppers place great importance on their local store paying grocery store employees a living wage and providing healthcare benefits to staff. They also identified a desire for stores to donate leftover food to the needy, to provide special services to the elderly and at-risk shoppers, to donate to non-food related charities and to employ workers with disabilities.
It’s important that store operators communicate their long-standing efforts within their community and actively provide updates on new initiatives as they are launched. The study finds that shoppers value these efforts and want to learn about how their local store helps those in need within their community.
For more information on these consumer insights and thoughts on how to address the varied issues of sustainability, read the full report here.