NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Thasos
Group, an alternative data intelligence firm that transforms
real-time locations from mobile phones worldwide into objective and
actionable insights, today published a research report,
"Competitive Impact of Lower Prices at Whole Foods,"
analyzing numbers, composition and behavior of new customers at
Whole Foods stores following significant price reductions in the
wake of the chain's acquisition by Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) on
August 28, 2017. Download the report
at www.thasos.com.
Key Findings Include:
- Foot traffic to Whole Foods increased 17% year-over-year during
the week of the price reduction beginning on August 28.
- As of the week ending September
16, foot traffic decelerated to 4% year-over-year, but
remained elevated relative to the three weeks preceding
August 28.
- Walmart's (NYSE: WMT) regular customers accounted for
the largest percentage (24%) of Whole Foods' new customers in the
week of the price reduction.
- Among Whole Foods' competitors, Trader Joe's saw the
highest rate of customer defections: on average, nearly 10% more
daily customers of Trader Joe's defected to Whole Foods in the week
of the price cuts relative to the week prior. The same calculation
for Sprouts yielded 8%.
- Whole Foods' new customers overwhelmingly belonged to the same
upper income demographic as the company's traditional customer
base. Defecting customers in the week of the price cuts came from
the wealthiest segment of each competing store's customer
base.
Overall, the report finds that foot traffic at Whole Foods
spiked sharply following the August
28 announcement of price cuts, driven primarily by new
customers, but has since settled in at lower, but still elevated
levels. Walmart, Kroger (NYSE: KR), Costco (NASDAQ: COST) and
Target (NYSE: TGT) provided the largest numbers of new customers,
while Trader Joe's, Sprouts (NASDAQ: SFM) and Target saw the
highest percentage of their own regular customers defecting to
Whole Foods. The price reductions were insufficient to attract new
kinds of customers, as the report found new customer demographics
(including income levels and distance driven to a given store)
largely matched those of existing customers.
Based on the largest repository of high quality mobile phone
location data after Alphabet/Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Apple
(NASDAQ: AAPL), and with little demographic bias, the Thasos
platform provides unparalleled visibility into foot traffic at
retail venues throughout the day, every day, with coverage
including approximately 90% of major U.S. supermarket chains, both
public and private.
Top 5 Sources of
Whole Foods' New Customers, August 28 – September 3,
2017
|
1.
Walmart
|
24%
|
|
2.
Kroger
|
16%
|
|
3.
Costco
|
15%
|
|
4.
Target
|
11%
|
|
5. Sam's
Club
|
5%
|
|
|
|
|
Top 5 Regular
Customer Defection Rates, August 28 – September 3, 2017
|
1. Trader
Joe's
|
10%
|
|
2.
Sprouts
|
8%
|
|
3.
Target
|
3%
|
|
4.
Costco
|
2%
|
|
5.
Safeway
|
2%
|
|
"Knowing which stores new customers have defected from, what
income levels they represent, how far they traveled to get to Whole
Foods, and ultimately, whether they will continue to shop there
after trying it out, are invaluable pieces of information for both
investors and the stores themselves," said Greg Skibiski, Thasos Group CEO and Founder.
"We all know that Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods has the
potential to be a gamechanger in the grocery space, and in the
'brick-and-mortar versus online' battle more broadly. It will be
extremely interesting to watch the winners and losers emerge from
the data over the coming months."
About Thasos Group
Thasos is an alternative data intelligence platform that
transforms real-time locations from mobile phones into objective
and actionable insights on the performance of businesses, markets,
and economies globally. Founded in 2011 at MIT, the firm is commercially successful with close
to 25 hedge fund clients and scalable information products that
have generated value for the last three years. Thasos' management,
investors and advisors are a who's who of data scientists, hedge
fund executives and academics, including PDT Co-Founder
Ken Nickerson, Acadian Asset
Management Founder Gary Bergstrom,
former D.E. Shaw Chief Risk Officer
Peter Bernard, MIT Media Lab
co-creator Alex "Sandy" Pentland, and Andrew Lo, Director of the Laboratory for
Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School
of Management. Thasos occupies a unique position in the
alternative data space by aggregating, validating, normalizing and
analyzing the largest pool of high-quality mobile phone location
data outside of Alphabet/Google and Apple.
For more information on Thasos Group, please visit
www.thasos.com.
Media Contact
Michael Kingsley
Forefront Communications
+1 914-522-9471
michael@forefrontcomms.com
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SOURCE Thasos Group