Kirthi Kalyanam : Safeway in Agreement to Purchase Remaining Andronico’s : KTVU San Francisco
Kirthi Kalyanam. JCPenney Research Professor, marketing department chair, and Director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University, was quoted in a KTVU San Francisco piece on Safeway’s acquisition of the remaining Andronico’s locations. He weighed in on the relative difficulty of grocery in the retail world, and the Bay Area shift towards e-commerce even for fresh foods.
An excerpt from the piece:
“‘Grocery is the notoriously tough retail business,’ said Kirthi Kalyanam, director of Santa Clara University's Retail Management Institute. ‘Very low margin, hyper competitive. Scale really matters.’
He's not surprised by the acquisition. He said more customers are turning to e-commerce for gourmet foods and grocery delivery services like Amazon Fresh making it harder for traditional grocery chains to compete.
‘The Bay Area consumer is fairly sophisticated, fairly tech savvy, fairly affluent and fairly knowledgeable about food,’ said Kalyanam. ‘They are probably buying more specialty food online than any other geographic area.’”
Read the rest of the article here»
Learn more about Professor Kirthi Kalyanam here»