Maybe Bigger is Not Always Better
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to hammer the supermarket industry, we must ask ourselves if bigger is necessarily better. Panic buying...
Articles by Gary Hawkins
Gary Hawkins
- Apr 23, 2020
- 3 min
When Sapiens Go Shopping: Customer Cognition at the Speed of Thought
Published by Winsight Grocery Business, April 22, 2022 Life on earth developed over millions of years, rising from the primordial soup:...
Gary Hawkins
- Apr 13, 2020
- 4 min
Opportunity Lost
I have spent many years of my life as a retailer so I hopefully have more empathy than most for what retailers are going through during...
Gary Hawkins
- Mar 29, 2020
- 4 min
A Retail Mindstep like None Before: The COVID-19 Crisis
Mindsteps, a construct created by astronomer Gerald Hawkins (no relation) several decades ago, refer to irreversible shifts in thinking...
Gary Hawkins
- Mar 28, 2020
- 3 min
Identity Management in Retail: Its Time Has Come
Identity management is set to explode as archaic state laws governing age-restricted sales of alcohol and other products play catch-up as...
Gary Hawkins
- Mar 28, 2020
- 4 min
Three Innovation Imperatives for Retailers
The transformation of brick-and-mortar retail to the new digital world is not without its trials and tribulations. Walmart has recently...
Gary Hawkins
- Mar 28, 2020
- 4 min
10 Resolutions for Retailers in 2020
As we begin a new decade, I’d like to offer up a handful of resolutions retail industry executives may want to adopt: Resolve to reflect...
Gary Hawkins
- Mar 28, 2020
- 4 min
Grocery E-Commerce 2.0 Update: Little Progress
Eighteen months ago, I wrote a piece about why retailers’ first-generation efforts to move online were not enough, that many retailers...
Gary Hawkins
- Feb 21, 2019
- 4 min
Heading Into Retail in the Age of ‘I’
We are entering the age of "I"—a time when the world is increasingly tailored to each of us individually. We’ve come to regard this...
Gary Hawkins
- Jan 31, 2019
- 4 min
Three Keys for Mastering Innovation
As anyone who attended CES or NRF in the opening weeks of this year can attest, tech-fueled innovation is speeding up. We see robots...
Gary Hawkins
- Oct 8, 2018
- 3 min
Pseudo Customer Centricity: Fool’s Gold
Many regional retailers are (at last!) intent on becoming customer-centric, more than a decade after The Kroger Co. led the way and more...
Gary Hawkins
- Aug 15, 2018
- 3 min
Real-Time Insights on Amazon Prime and Whole Foods Integration
It’s been a year since Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market, triggering a grocery industry innovation war and a stampede online. While...
Gary Hawkins
- Aug 3, 2018
- 2 min
Amazon Prime at Whole Foods: What’s the Impact?
When Amazon acquired Whole Foods a year or so ago, many industry pundits speculated that Amazon would extend its Prime loyalty program to...
Gary Hawkins
- Jul 20, 2018
- 3 min
Customer Touch Points and the Human Experience
I was visiting someone in the hospital the other day and, looking about the room, noticed an Amazon Echo installed on the wall opposite...
Gary Hawkins
- Jul 10, 2018
- 4 min
The Amazon Doctrine and the Innovation Arms Race
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has long understood the value of being out in front as technology innovation fundamentally alters the rules of...
Gary Hawkins
- Jun 19, 2018
- 4 min
Leveraging Shopper Insights From Chaos to Action
Multidimensional shopper data is the new primordial ooze giving rise to powerful insights leading to increased retail performance. Novel...
Gary Hawkins
- May 17, 2018
- 4 min
E-Commerce 2.0 Comes of Age
Primed by studies projecting 20% of industry sales moving online within the next few years and triggered by Amazon’s aggressive moves to...
Gary Hawkins
- May 3, 2018
- 4 min
Looking for Sales Growth? Be Relevant to Your Shoppers
Every retailer is looking to increase sales, and there is no better way to do that than by providing savings on products each customer...
Gary Hawkins
- Apr 17, 2018
- 4 min
The Convergence of Food and Health
Food represents an estimated $5 trillion a year industry in the United States. Nearly everywhere we look in the physical world—and...
Gary Hawkins
- Feb 22, 2018
- 3 min
Tackling Retail’s Big Data Challenge
Data has long powered modern retail, helping Walmart become a master of supply chain logistics and fueling Kroger’s customer-centric...
Gary Hawkins
- Feb 6, 2018
- 3 min
The 3 Immutable Laws of Retail Innovation
Everyone in the retail industry, from the cashier to the CEO, knows that transformation and disruption are changing the way we shop. But...
Gary Hawkins
- Feb 2, 2018
- 3 min
Healthcare and Food Align to Benefit the Individual
The personalized wellness vision aligns managed care organizations, healthcare providers, employers, food manufacturers and retailers to...
Gary Hawkins
- Jan 24, 2018
- 3 min
Personalized Wellness: A Virtual Dietitian
Healthcare has made valiant efforts to guide consumers to beneficial foods, only to find the information quickly forgotten within hours...
Gary Hawkins
- Jan 17, 2018
- 3 min
Health and Wellness Gets Personal
As a nation, we spend over $5 trillion a year to feed our bodies. That’s the value of food sold each year in the United States through...
Gary Hawkins
- Jan 3, 2018
- 3 min
Many Retailers Are Asking the Wrong Question About Personalized Offers
Years ago, I remember some retailers boasting that they had no advertising expense. These retailers were charging brands for ad placement...
Gary Hawkins
- Dec 20, 2017
- 3 min
Poor Personalization Will Cost You
Amazon’s business serves one master: the customer. Everything the company does is focused on securing a growing portion of each...
Gary Hawkins
- Dec 18, 2017
- 3 min
Why Customer Experience Is the Defining Digital Battleground
There is no better example of how a traditional supermarket retailer must change to remain competitive in today’s world than that...
Gary Hawkins
- Dec 12, 2017
- 3 min
How Personalization is Reshaping the Shopping Experience
Amazon, the nemesis of brick & mortar retailers, is a master at helping shoppers discover relevant products the shopper may be interested...
Gary Hawkins
- Dec 5, 2017
- 3 min
Let’s Get Personal: Digital Customer Engagement in Supermarket Retail
As physical brick-and-mortar shopping melds with the digital world, customer experience is the defining battleground since shoppers can...