Image by macrovector on Magnific

Key Takeaways

• Grocery shoppers aren’t always shopping for ingredients. Often, they’re trying to solve a more immediate problem: what’s for dinner?
• Effective promotions can create value by reducing mental load, not just by offering a lower price.
• Bundling complementary products around a meal can turn a product promotion into a solution and give customers a reason to act now.
• Good marketing doesn’t always require sophisticated personalization. Sometimes understanding the customer’s problem is enough to change behavior.
• The best value proposition may not be the product you’re selling, but the decision you’re helping the customer make.

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I feel like there’s a joke in there. Of course, grocery stores are selling ingredients; otherwise, they would be restaurants.

But one of the best grocery emails I ever received understood what I really wanted and changed my behavior. And it was so good, I remember it years later.

There is an independently owned gourmet food store within walking distance of my home. It’s one of those places with a great selection of meats, decent produce, and a well-stocked and skillfully curated selection of local craft beers and ciders. 

It’s the type of place you pre-order your Thanksgiving turkey from. The type of place that would never install a self-checkout. And all employees wear aprons with the store name embroidered on the front.

The offer: purchase a pot roast and get a free bag of carrots, a free bag of potatoes, and a free bag of onions. I grabbed my reusable canvas grocery bag and walked to the store that day. 

The campaign wasn’t personalized. There was no data mining involved. But it solved a problem my family faced every day: what to make for dinner. 

The promo wasn’t about a pot roast. It was about reducing my mental load.

It removed one decision from my plate after a long day of making other equally important decisions. And I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Nearly 40% of shoppers would like their store to be more helpful with meal planning. Maybe it’s because more of us are waiting longer to plan our meals. Maybe it’s because steep inflation and fuel costs have made us rethink how we’ve been doing things. Maybe we’re just burned out.

To some extent, grocery stores have realized this for a while. That’s how a simple roasted chicken became a $52.1 billion deli category. 

The promotion got me into the store, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the reality that this was still a gourmet grocery store. The experience solved one dinner. It didn’t change the value equation for every shopping trip. But, if I were in charge of their marketing, I would lean hard into what I knew we did best: quality meats and a lovingly curated selection of local brews and ciders. 

But more than anything else, I’d help customers decide.

But maybe I’m an outlier. Maybe everyone is still building shopping lists from weekly sales flyers, and I’m the only one who’s frustrated.

I honestly don’t know.

Update: I decided to find out. I surveyed 48 shoppers about their grocery shopping habits, including how they plan, budget, choose stores and use grocery apps. See what 48 shoppers told me about how they grocery shop →