Since 1969, Rigters Supermarkets have been the locals’ choice for grocery shopping in Geraldton, Western Australia. As a locally owned, family business with 3 convenient locations, they operate in a highly competitive market and pride themselves on continuous improvement of their supermarket offer to meet the needs of their shoppers.

The Team at Rigters identified the opportunity in their demographic catchment, to create a point of difference to their competitors, by launching a new, on trend, destination department for BBQing, to attract and retain the high value BBQing shopper.

With the Vision is to ‘Inspire BBQ’, a new, one stop dedicated BBQ section was created, offering, Specialty BBQ products including Bulk Meat Cuts, Rubs, Sauces, Marinades, Smoking Woodchips, Fuel, BBQ Tools, BBQ Cleaning & BBQ Accessories.

Scope

With the Understanding that ‘You can only manage what you can measure’, the Rigters group subscribed to Xsights Gateway Analytics for Audience Measurement & Insights Reporting, focused on the following;

1. Collect Audience Data including Count, Location, Time & Dwell for Total Store and their New BBQ Section.
2. Collect Attributable Sales & Brand Awareness results for specific BBQ Shopper Engagement activities.
3. Generate Insights Reports from Audience & Sales Data for;

                      o Validating the Contribution of Advertising,
                      o Development of Audience Profiles for Non-Members,
                      o Building a Better Understanding of the Variables Affecting Promotions and Shopper Engagement, and,
                      o Optimising Location Events

The first Insights Report to be prepared was for their Official BBQ Department Launch Event held on Friday the 6th of November 2020.

Primary Event Objectives

1. Create Awareness for the new BBQ Department at Queens SUPA IGA through supporting Email Marketing, Social Media Advertising, Proximity to Purchase Digital Signage Advertising & Local Area Marketing including Community News, Radio and Letterbox Direct Mail.

2. Drive Sales of BBQ Products through Personal Selling, Demo/Sampling and Consumer Promotion and reported through Xsights Gateway Analytics & Queens POS.

The identified Attendance Drivers were the Chance to Win, the Chance to Sample and the Chance to Ask Questions of a BBQ Expert.

With these established, complementary partners including Metcash, Smokey Q, Linley Valley Pork & Mt Barker Chicken were secured as sponsoring participants with the following activities confirmed for the event;

• Consumer Promotion launched to win Charcoal BBQ valued at $599 (6 Week Promotion Period)
• Smokey Q Hamper Raffle including assorted Rubs & Sauces (Drawn on day for event attendees)
• Paul Lange – Chef, TV Personality & Owner of Smokey Q in attendance
• BBQ Recipe Sampling of Mt Barker Free Range BBQ Whole Chicken with Smokey Q Chicken Rub including Recipe Card handout
• BBQ Recipe Sampling of Linley Valley Pulled Pork with Smokey Q Rib Rub including Recipe Card handout

Results

Validated Audience Measurement with Xsights Gateway Analytics
• BBQ Department Traffic was up 13% for the day and 43% for the time of the Event.
• Shopper Engagement was up from 19.7% to 25.6%.
• Dwell Time increased significantly with 20% of Shoppers spending greater than 10 minutes in the new section.

Attributable Sales for In Store Event
• Participating Products from Smokey Q Rubs & Sauces, Linley Valley Pork & Mt Barker Chicken were up a combined +557%.
• Total BBQ Department Sales (excluding meat) up +122% on prior week.

Targeted eDM Campaign
• Target Volume 1,571 Subscribers
• Target Delivered 1,566 Subscribers
• Open Rate 36.33% (Best Ever Open Rate for a Rigters Group eDM campaign).

FaceBook Event
• 126 people responded (Best Ever response for a Rigters Group FaceBook promoted In Store Event).

Actionable Insights

Stuart Bain – Operations Manager for Rigters Group had this to say;
"Using the technology and reporting provided by Xsights has allowed us to get a greater understanding of our customers, how long they spend in store and also where they go inside the store. Prior to COVID, we implemented many sampling and tasting sessions in the store, always focusing on the busier times according to transaction numbers. By using the reports and recommendations provided by Xsights we are now able to run instore events at times where we are more likely to get customer engagement and encourage longer dwell times, leading to an increase in sales. The BBQ event with Smokey Q proved the value in running these demonstrations at the right time to get maximum customer engagement, the maximum sales and the maximum value out of the staff rostered on. Looking forward to planning more of these events in the near future and would highly recommend other independent retailers get on board". 

Paul Lange - Chef, TV Personality & Owner of Smokey Q had this to say;
"I would like to extend a big thankyou to Stuart Bain and Rigters for the opportunity to showcase our award-winning range of BBQ rubs & Sauces in their stores. The customer interaction and feedback was something that I have never experienced with a supermarket before. The customers were very engaged and excited by the fact we were handing out samples of real BBQ meats with our rubs on them. I was very impressed with the way the technology from Xsights could be harnessed the way it was. When used in the right manner this is a powerful tool to test, measure and develop actionable insights." 

Dean Phillips – Xsights Director had this to say;
"We would like to thank the team at Rigters, for utilising our services for Audience Measurement & Custom Campaign reporting. We are excited about the results we have seen in partnership with participating suppliers and the opportunity that has now been validated for further BBQ focused customer engagement & sales initiatives."

Final Thought

Xsights in partnership with the Rigters Group for their new BBQ Department, is another example of how validated data collection can enable a higher level of intuitive understanding for the development of actionable insights.

Proximity Audience Data for a defined location, is now accessible, affordable and easy to collect with the advent of Xsights Gateway Analytics.

To find out more about Xsights Gateway Analytics, visit; www.xsights.io