I took this photo while shopping at Australian supermarket giant Coles yesterday.
I’ll start by saying not returning supermarket trolleys, or worse stealing them is not cool. It probably adds some cost to our grocery bills, albeit small.
But when I saw this poster up in my local Coles, I tweeted it and made the comment that it was reasonably amusing. Then Cameron Reilly, made what I thought was an insightful comment from a marketing perspective:
then I responded with this….
and Cameron finished it off with this 140 characters…
Which to be honest is probably the sentiments of most of Coles’ customers.
I’ll say it again – ‘Incentives shape behaviour’ – on this occasion there is no incentive for customers to care. How hard would it be for Coles to offer a shopping voucher for lost trolley returns? Or some other small incentive? In fact, it’s an insult to their customers to ask for help in a such a one sided manner. It’s very 1970’s marketing.
Startup blog says: respect your customers and reward the right behaviour.