Brenda Burch Dumont's Blog

Hardlines – www.hardlines.ca and the University of Alberta’s School of Retailing have recently teamed up and this survey is their first venture.  With all the marketing clout of home improvement heavies like Home Depot, Rona, Lowe’s, Home Hardware, etc. etc. you’d think customers may pick something different than good old location, location, location but that’s what they did.  As Peters and Waterman said two decades ago “In Search of Excellence” always good to ‘stick to the knitting’.  I just wonder how the people taking the survey every got those many Edmontonians to slow down enough to answer the questions!  Edmonton remains a red-hot city for retail……..

Survey reveals location is tops for consumers

EDMONTON — Location, location, location. The mantra rings truer than ever, based on the latest research by HARDLINES, in association with the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Retail Studies.

In exit surveys of home improvement shoppers in Edmonton, respondents were asked to indicate which factors were most important to them when shopping at home improvement stores. Unprompted, location was the major factor in determining their preferred shopping location, cited by more than one-third of respondents. Store selection (18.4%) and prices (14.3%) were also important factors in the decision process.

To further examine variables consumers consider when picking a retail home improvement store to shop at, the survey asked respondents to rank specific variables from 1 to 5, 1 showing the greatest importance, and 5 the least. (Respondents were able to rank more than one variable with the same rank if they saw them equal in importance.)

Once again, the factors that were rated with the greatest importance were location – rated number one by 48% of respondents, followed by prices (42%) and variety/selection (38%).

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