Shopping Portfolio

I alluded to the US retail market possibly moving to more innovative store formats driven by greater diversification of the customer base due to more varied life style choices in my previous post. I found a very interesting observation made by Brian Gildenberg of MVI in this article featured on the Hub magazine. Mr Gildenberg explains how Tesco could be capitalizing on the rapid change in the US markets indicated by the following 4 trends
"1) The apparent end of retail consolidation; 2) fragmentation of consumers and retail formats; 3) shoppers using a portfolio of formats to meet their needs; and 4)natural foods, energy efficient processes and an environmental message." Each of the trends are discussed with insightful details but the part which struck the most was an interesting statistic
"store sizes are becoming more polarized. When you aggregate stores that are more than 100,000 square feet and stores that are less than 15,000 square feet, both are actually growing markedly faster than the market average".
This might indicate that there are big store formats getting created to cater to a certain segment while more innovative formats are getting created at an equal pace to cater to a different demographic. A unique buying pattern is seen to be emerging where a customer uses a collection (portfolio) of stores to meet their requirements -
"The continued proliferation of the U.S. retail landscape into a variety of formats is leading to what we call a “portfolio theory” of shopping behavior. A typical shopper might visit a combination of club store, supermarket, specialty grocer and chain drug store to fulfill a variety of specific needs based on which format meets each need best."