Consume This!
Mike Laur - April 7, 2011
Consumers by and large are slow, pack-like creatures, unfit for actual hunting, gathering or grazing and better suited for browsing price comparisons online. And let's face it: the shopping experience can be unpleasant. Bumping against the great unwashed of consumerdom, waiting in long lines, praying that guy over there doesn't pull out a gun and start shooting.... Walking miles for Camels, Q-tips, car wax and copy paper can be hard work.
Given a great store and great products, shopping can be fun, but it's not taken lightly anymore. An extreme shopping mission may involve hours or days of preparation. Extreme Couponing is a new TV show, and worth a watch. It pits single-minded, purpose-driven shoppers against grocery stores, and the shoppers come out ahead. Way ahead. Yay consumers! You gotta love it, because people are walking out of Kroger's and Albertson's stores toting away over $500 in groceries and paying $5.97 to the store - courtesy of coupons and exhaustive preparation.
Extreme Couponing will be a runaway hit for its producers and TLC channel. Straightforward production, without all the pseudo-drama of most reality TV, it actually shows us how these uber-couponers work their magic. It gives us how-to know-how on kicking the grocery store's ass. What's not to like?
Well, if you're a Safeway or King Soopers store manager, there's plenty to not like. Like the five hours it takes to process the transactions through a checkout line. Like the hours spent trying to get payment from manufacturers and distributors for all those little bitty paper coupons. Like giving away food. This won't last very long. The show exposed a few of the weaknesses and loopholes that the shopper-heroes exploited to get at the grocers' soft underbellies, and grocers no doubt will change and adapt new coupon redemption rules. They have to. The last thing a grocer will countenance is a swarm of hoarders clogging up checkout stations, walking out the store with free groceries.
Of course - much to the grocer's relief - not everybody is an obsessed coupon collector. We are just as likely to waste incredible amounts of time and resources in pursuit of a deal as we are to pick up whatever is at eye-level and pay with a credit card. While grocers want and need consumers, they certainly don't need or want all consumers. Imagine the grocer's cash drawers if everybody shopped with the barcode precision of an extreme couponer.
Consume this:
Gallup says that two-thirds of all Americans confess to drinking, and 44% of us drink beer. More than three-quarters of the beer consumed in the US is produced by just a few international companies - InBev, better known as Bud, and SABMiller, aka MillerCoors. 25% of 24% means that craft beer drinkers represent about six percent of the total population. Call us the Hoppy Minority if you want, but we are not the typical consumer. We might drive the wheels off a car trying to find good beer.
Grocery stores are not the Craft Beer Drinker's best friends. To the grocer, we are 5.9% of customers who come into his store. If he is permitted to sell a little craft beer, he may get us to buy an occasional six pack or a case if it's on sale. (Calling All Coupons!) What he's really counting on is our buying several more of the 35,000+ items he has stocked on his shelves, in addition to the beer. Hey, it's his business, and we're all beneficiaries of the selection, quality and prices found in most grocery stores. But grocers don't have our interests in mind. The grocer's job is to make a profit and live to sell another day, and it's a business where 3% profit is pretty good. Beer is a high-profit item for a grocery or convenience store, and grocers would like to sell a lot more. That's why they're trying to change the laws that currently permit them to sell 3.2 beer and be allowed instead to sell all types of beer.
As noted radio host Mike Rosen points out in his defense of consumerism, there is a "finite demand for alcohol sales". If you permit c-stores and grocers to sell all beer, you'll roughly double the number of outlets for beers. You're still selling the same total amount of beer, but in different stores, and to different customers. Change the laws, and you'll change the equations that have provided a favorable environment to grow the craft beer marketplace in Colorado, and small brewers will suffer. Remember, we're talking alcohol, not apples. It's not a market economy, it's a highly-regulated marketplace that (at least for now) works to the benefit of us, the craft beer lovers.
Return to that Hoppy Minority calculation for a moment. While we may be small potatoes to the grocer, we're damn important to liquor store owners and craft brewers. Our buying preferences are what keeps Colorado craft beer alive.
Support Your Local Brewer. It's Important.
