Although the demographic information is different from location to location, there are some similarities among all stores customer profiles that can be used to improve profitability.
I dug into my past to review some of the demographic data that I’ve collected over 20 years and found clear demographic differences between frequent, moderate and infrequent travel plaza and truckstop customers.
Use these three shopper profiles to create merchandising and marketing tactics for your truckstop.
Frequent Shoppers:
- Males
- Teens through middle age, depending on locations vicinity to town/schools
- Lower incomes
- Married with children
- Household head is employed
- Blue-collar occupations
- Less educated
- Smokers
- Interstate business customers with regular travel patterns
Moderate Shoppers:
- More female
- Higher incomes
- Married no children
- More educated
- More professional
- Somewhat older
- Less Likely to smoke
Infrequent Shoppers:
- Female
- Nonsmokers
- Married no children
- Middle-aged and older, not true for OTR drivers however
- Retired or not working, not true if location is within vicinity of town
- College graduates
- Single person households
- Higher incomes
However, one thing that appears to be shifting from my history is shoppers who make less than $45,000 are purchasing groceries less frequently from "quick trip" channels, such as drug and convenience stores. (Data from a new report from Acosta Sales and Marketing.) It is imperative that we review our grocery sets to ensure the demographic that is shopping our stores is the one that we are marketing to in this category. While the category normally does not represent more than 8-16 linear feet of space within a normal truckstop, you can generate additional sales and profit by replacing the lard, flour, and salad dressing for more immediate consumption grab and go meals, fruit cups, noodle soups.
Photo credit: Ira Wexler/NATSO
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