Nov 18, 2014

By Sue Wilkinson, Senior Director, Information Service & Research, Food Marketing Institute How Well Do You Know The Grocery Industry?

FMI has been surveying the grocery industry for 64 years. This year’s The Food Retailing Industry SPEAKS 2014 report provides industry benchmarks, covering such key topics as sales and approaches to differentiation. SPEAKS is our yardstick that helps us know as much as we can about the grocery industry.

In the report survey, industry leaders were asked to rate issues that affect their businesses on a scale of 1 to 10 – with 10 being the highest impact. This scale has been coined the FMI Worry Index. The 17 issues ranked in the FMI Worry Index serve as the framework for the SPEAKS survey data and fall into three categories:

  1. Cost Management 
  2. Competition 
  3. Customer Considerations

Given the labor-intensive nature of retailing, it is not surprising that healthcare costs were the top concern for senior leaders. Under the Affordable Care Act, all business with more than 50 full-time employees are required to offer those employees health care or face tax penalties. In fact, while regionals and chains ranked healthcare costs and local and national economy at almost level intensity, independent retailers rated healthcare costs 7.8, well ahead of local and national economy’s 6.8.

So, how well do you know the grocery industry? Test your knowledge with our SPEAKS Quiz at www.fmi.org/GrocerySpeaks.  Be sure to watch the video to learn more about the 2014 findings and download the full report.