When consumers shopped the aisles of different retail channels during the past couple of months as they prepared for the holidays, product assortments and even store environments probably started to seem the same after a while. This is partially because of channel blurring, according to Chicago-based Information Resources Inc.’s (IRI) September/October 2014 Times & Trends report “Channel Migration: The Road to Growth Has Many Lanes.” In fact, today it is more difficult to distinguish between retail formats based on product assortment than it was a few years ago, it reports.
As retail channels change, mass merchandisers and supercenters, warehouse and club stores, and discount retailers have expanded their grocery offerings, competing with the supermarket channel for share, points out David McGoldrick, U.S. analyst at Chicago-based Euromonitor International.