I recently watched the programme about Sainsbury’s – Inside the Supermarket on the BBC. Here are my thoughts on episode 6:

Before you start any project, Sainsbury’s should be looking into if it is either targeting current customers or competitor customers.

Take the creation of the Christmas ad.

Nice piece of film but who’s it targeting? How’s that going to bring in sales?

Because it ‘pulls on the heart strings’ does that result in sales.

Not really.

So why do they want to focus on the heart strings?

What they should be doing is focusing on creating a campaign that focuses on their current customers and encouraging new customers.

Maybe a thought is to look at the market and see how people spend at Christmas.

In a previous episode, someone said that people ‘trade up’ from Sainsbury’s to M&S at Christmas. 

But what about if people ‘trade up’ to Sainsbury’s from other competitors. Say they normally shop at ASDA, Tecso’s etc and upgrade to Sainsbury’s at Christmas. 

Then you could create a Christmas TV advert about that.

Rather than just go for a goal at ‘pulling heart strings’, you can go for a goal of pulling in more customers.

In the same episode they were selling pumpkins for Halloween. 

Again, who are they targeting, current customers or competitor customers?

In this case they are targeting current customers.

Think about it. Most people going into the store are regular Sainsbury’s customers.

People aren’t going to just go to Sainsbury’s just for pumpkins.

You might get a few but overall it’s current customers.

So when current customers enter the store, you try and upsell them with buying a pumpkin.

Now when you get to that stage, you need to try and upsell the product.

And to be fair they did sell over million pumpkins which is impressive.

But how do you improve on that?

Well, think about the consumer

Why do they buy pumpkins? Mainly to carve them and make a face/shape.

So why not encourage people to do this. Maybe create a competition online and find the best carved pumpkin. 

It encourages people to try out pumpkin carving and gives a reason to buy.