Importance of Product Shelf Position at Safeway and Albertson's Grocery Chains

Through an interview on March 2^nd Eric Viser, an assistant store manager at Albertsons, presented some surprising information on shelf position. The extent to which this subject is handled through the local store was the most surprising area of this interview. Specific locations of products, let alone, the mass majority of the store set up comes from the corporate offices on what they call a 'Plan-A-Gram.' They do not have much play with shelf design, positioning, or product placement. The side note to this is special displays for event such as the Superbowl. For this, corporate told Albertsons, Pepsi and Bud light beer were their specialty items, which would receive special front displays. The local store was able to arrange the products in different customer appealing setups. This circumstance holds true for all special front of the store feature items.

Albertsons, along with Safeway, sell their shelf space based on a set price for each location to the many different companies they sell products for. Price for this space is determined by location in the store and level on the shelf. End caps receive the highest price point followed by other special locations, which vary from store to store. Along a common aisle though, the higher the product, the higher the price point for its real-estate. One may believe eye level would cost more, but through interviews with representatives of both companies the later became evident. Along these lines, the horizontal location was also presented as an important factor. Private label items of both companies are placed to the right of their national brand items. Mark Wiggly, a Safeway store manager, stated this was because, "the majority of the human population is right handed, therefore; the more people will grab to their right before their left." This simple psychological knowledge has helped both the Albertsons and Safeway brands to increase their market share since their inceptions.

Since both of these stores receive a schematic from their corporate office for shelf setups, they also have to constantly be audited to ensure accurate following. Almost monthly, though they are random, each of the managers stated their stores receive internal audits from regional and corporate managers. Simply put these audits ensure all stores are similar to one another for customer ease. "Once a customer knows one of our stores, they know them all." This statement was from Mark Wiggly of Safeway during our interview on March 1^st.