by Bernardo Lopez - FoodBizDaily.com
February 08 2010 - The Irish convenience story chain Centra has made it their priority to accentuate their products’ value, seeing as how conscious consumers have gotten since the global recession.
Centra has begun a three-year sponsorship of a soap opera, in order to increase sales of private-label products. Ray Kelly, Centra’s marketing director told reporters “The sponsorship of ‘Emmerdale’ will allow Centra to communicate our own-brand range…There are over 790 products in the range and our challenge is to get across that message of the good quality of the own-brand product at cheaper prices,” he then added “We spent a lot of money on TV advertising in the second half of last year. We will spend as much on advertising again in 2010, on top of the ‘Emmerdale’ sponsorship. Our research tells us that we are starting to differentiate ourselves from the other convenience stores.”
Centra will also be introducing a “Free Friday” promo that will give customers a change to taste the products each Friday as a part of their new sponsorship.
Seeing as Irish convenience store sales have fallen 10% in the past year, and city and town locations have dropped by as much as 15%, Centra is working on bringing back customers with their new lower-priced private label products. Kelly stated “Sales of our packaged own-brand products are growing at over 30 percent year per annum and now represent 17 percent of overall sales. The smart shoppers understand that own brands are of the same quality as the leading brands and are up to 33 percent cheaper.”