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Tucker came from the American chain Hurst's, and her experience there persuaded her that everyday low pricing, the strategy pursued by that giant and by most of the British supermarket groups, wouldn't work for a small player like Williams. Its larger rivals could too easily undercut it. Instead, she decided to use a high-low strategy, which is generally known as loss-leading. The technique's familiar: cut the price of twenty or so selected items each week. The radical part came in the implementation. Instead of making it a national campaign, which would allow Williams's rivals to instantly follow its price cuts, the company's 'best deals', as they're called, vary from town to town, and change every week. The company employs five thousand distributors in order that, every week, a third of all the people living in the catchment area of a Williams store receive flyers through their doors, detailing these special offers. The price cuts are dramatic, like forty per cent off breakfast cereals, the same off bars of soap, fifty per cent off soft drinks, and so on. Indeed, many items are sold at below the cost to Williams. |
