Shopping Trolley Marketing.

Fresh&Easy (Tesco's chain of low-price US supermarkets) provides another reminder that marketing is everything you do in the customer's gaze, and that it's the customer not the company who rationalises it.

Amongst a number of tweaks they have made during a three month hiatus in new store openings, they decided to replace their original small trolleys with regular size ones. The thinking had presumably been to supply trolleys that matched the expected average purchase (Fresh & Easy being bigger than convenience stores but smaller than regular supermarkets).

However, as the chief executive explained, this was interpreted in an entirely different way.

"If you have dinky little carts they think you are a dinky little business. Full carts are a sign of a full shop." (source ft.com).

I'm not sure he's exactly right. It's the absence of full-sized trolleys, not the presence of small ones that makes people think that way.