Once upon a Kimmie

Meinhardt is a high-end organic grocery store, similar to Choices and Capers. Meinhardts has two locations, one on South Granville and one on 16th and Arbutus. I work at the one on South Granville. The location of this store is in the heart of many shops. The shops range from shoppers drug mart to William Sonoma to American Apparel. The neighbourhood is quite busy and there is a consistent flow of customers that shop along the streets. Meinhardt is a small local grocery store, but they sell products that are of “high-quality” and rare to find at competing stores. Certain products are imported in and cannot be found anywhere else. Customers make the effort to go to Meinhardt just to find specific items.

In my opinion, Meinhardt prices are much higher than Safeway or Superstore. The atmosphere of Meinhardt stores is more elegant and luxurious. The soothing music, warming environment, and the smell of baked goods bring in customers that live nearby. They exhibit qualities of premium pricing. Premium pricing means that firm deliberately prices a product above the prices set for competing products to capture those customers who always shop for the best or for whom price does not matter. Customers at Meinhardts know that the prices are expensive compared to Superstore, but they still shop there because of how they value their products and services. Meinhardt is somewhat like a brand. Many customers that I help mention that the prices are very expensive, yet I see them come in the store every day. The customers may keep coming back because of the location and convenience of the store, but majority are there because they are loyal to the brand and Meinhardt’s represents a certain status or class.

While working at Meinhardt, for an entire week, we gave out free discount cards to customers. Customers responded in many different ways. Some who purchased a lot declined the discount card because they either didn’t care, or they thought there are other costs involved. Some customers responded with “it’s about time they did something like this”. It seemed to me as though the customers were reluctant to shop there but they continued to on a regular basis. And then when Meinhardts introduced this new discount card, the customers were more inclined to shop there. I think it was a very smart marketing strategy.

I found it quite interesting to see how customers reacted to promotions in the store and the newly introduced discount cards. Also, Meinhardt just began giving out cookie samples and they are testing to see how effective having cookie samples are in relation to their sales. I heard some customers say “ I deserve a cookie sample for the amount of money I spend here.” I get a lot of mixed feelings towards different aspects of the store. I pay much more attention to what goes on around me in the store in terms of supply chain, management and promotions.