Every year, the NACS Convenience Voices team celebrates the new year in July. It’s marked by a new set of surveys being deployed across the country. Last year saw around 10,000 responses as the research team collected the honest opinions of consumers at the “retail moment of truth,” which is immediately when customers exit the store.
Convenience Voices rounds out the NACS research offerings, which include the NACS State of the Industry (SOI) Report®, the NACS SOI Data Archive and the NACS SOI Talent Dashboard. Consumer data is an essential compliment to operational and financial data collected for the SOI Report; after all, convenience is the ultimate currency in today’s marketplace.
An impressive 9.8% of consumers reported visiting a c-store more than once a day.
The survey questions are curated and designed to pinpoint consumers’ attitudes and actions, which are rapidly changing. Shopping behaviors and lifestyles have shifted dramatically in the past few years, and consumers have increasingly become more price-sensitive and value-seeking.
Convenience Voices collects national numbers for companies to benchmark against, but each participating company receives a personalized report showing exactly what customers thought of their experience at the store. Questions range from demographic information (who is the shopper?) and customer intentions (who are they shopping for and why?), to drilled-down information about why exactly they chose a certain location (what about the products or offerings made you choose this store?).
While 2024 data is currently out in the field being collected, 2023 data is a great window into how consumers were feeling. Keep in mind that these are national statistics. The answers to these questions are also collected for each Convenience Voices customer, resulting in a personalized dataset.
27.4% of consumers chose a convenience store location for low pricing and 27.6% chose a store for loyalty perks.
Highlights from the 2023 data are:
The average convenience shopper made 2.6 trips to c-stores a week in 2023—and an impressive 9.8% of consumers reported visiting more than once a day. 76.0% of consumers reported their convenience store run taking place between running errands, commuting or just a quick trip to pick something up. The top reason for visiting a convenience store given by Convenience Voices respondents in 2023 was to purchase a drink (41.9%). A close second was getting gas or charging a vehicle, with 36.3% of reporting consumers choosing that option. 27.4% of consumers chose a convenience store location for low pricing and 27.6% chose a store for loyalty perks.
One of the most top-of-mind issues for retailers is their foodservice program—or rather, when and why customers might opt to eat somewhere else. In 2023, Convenience Voices data determined the food leakage rate was 25.7%. This meant that one in four customers planned to leave a convenience store with the intention of purchasing food at a QSR within the next 30 minutes.
About a quarter of customers indicated they were left looking for additional foodservice options (27.2%) or were not able to find a specific foodservice item at the store location (26.2%). Of course, these numbers may vary from company to company and by location. While foodservice leakage decreased by 3.6 points year over year, the industry leaves billions of dollars on the table.
Visit frequency, shopping instances and motivations, and food leakage rates are just a few of the many data points that Convenience Voices gathers, and there’s a significant amount of insight to be gleaned from knowing how and when your customers shop and what they’re looking for. If you’re interested in learning more about your customers through a Convenience Voices survey, contact Jayme Gough ([email protected]).