remember when the President’s Choice Insider Report would come out - a newsy, interesting newspaper insert with everything Dave Nichol has been up to in getting new food products into the Loblaws store. I worked at St. Clair and Yonge where the flagship store was located so it was a lot of fun back then. For a bit of nostalgia one can see his 1991 infomercials on YouTube - it has 10 key moments in the video. That tells us a lot about where our attention spans have gone since then.
Does Costco have a something similar in terms of promotion? It seems to me it has the kind of loyalty that Loblaws had back in the 90s. But then Loblaws was promoting exclusivity and elite products. Costco is promoting price savings on anything and everything. And it is everything - flooring, progressive eye glasses, cookies and cream protein shakes, and so on in the weekly flyer.. There is a “box” of Quaker quick oats - it is 5.16 kg - I don’t wonder where that would fit in my kitchen cupboards. It won’t fit anywhere.
That seems to be where we are as a society now - focused on buying as much as we can for as little as we can - and we call it cost savings. It makes sense as we are in a society that is inundated with products to buy. Costco has taken care of this with its flyer approach. You can see the Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day flyers now. You can plan all your savings until the New Year.
On the other hand, Forbes says that part of Costco’s attraction is that it makes the in-store shopping fun with “treasures” to be discovered when walking down the aisles as things are placed randomly. It is called “friction” in shopping. While the PC Loblaws house brand is cheaper, the Kirkland brand is considered premium. Things like this give Costco the top rank in customer loyalty.
There’s nothing like an Ontario lake with the sun sparkling on the waves. Memories Of… that’s what Dave Nichols would say about the products he discovered during his travels.
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