How could Loblaw potentially fail or succeed to get ethnic customers?

Loblaw takes Target as a potential competitor, at least as hinted by its president in a recent interview with analysts. Yes it is true competition in the retail space gets tougher, but I still can't picture Target and Loblaw fight side by side.

In the same interview, Loblaw talked about getting new Canadians as a strategic priority for the long term. It sounds good, but there are a few things they need to watch in the execution.

First of all, offering ethnic food is not the same as getting ethnic customers. The T&T acquisition a couple of years back did add some ethnic flavor to Loblaw's shelf. However, T&T itself is becoming more of a destination for the non-Asians to shop for Asian fares than a grocer of choice for Chinese Canadians, particularly when you look at the shopper mix at T&T's downtown Toronto and newest Yonge & 16th locations. It is fair if Loblaw means to offer more diverse flavors to their mainstream customer base. However, if their goal is to get more ethnic customers, they need to think about their execution strategy again.

Second, when you talk about competing for ethnic customers, you can not limit your sights to the large national chains. I won't hesitate to bet that all the mainstream grocery stores will cumulatively lose market share to the fast growing ethnic food stores, if their change stops at comparing the ethnic food offerings in their stores only with their traditional competition. This took me back to an irrelevant research I looked at a while ago. Between 2000 and 2006, all the Canadian banks together gave up market share in the small business lending sector, especially lending to small agricutural businesses, to the non-banking finance companies and international banks, by a significant percentage, partially due to oversight. Echoing to that point, a 2010 industry report from a CIBC World Markets analyst revealed that the ethnic grocery stores have been imposing a meaningful impact to the mainstream grocery stores in geographies like Greater Toronto Area. The new competitive landscape makes direct competition against ethnic grocers inevitable for the mainstream chains.

Third, how would Loblaw fight against the authentic ethnic grocery stores such as Foody Mart? My answer is capital. Needless to say, the ethnic stores have competitive advantage in customer insights (even though Loblaw has T&T intelligence) and cost (think about the overhead and labour costs for a freelance photographer vs a full blown studio). Loblaw's strength is that it could afford opening more stores more quickly. Since I moved from the Markham/Scarborough border to Thornhill, I keep going back to that area for grocery shopping, because Foody Mart, Oriental and the other Chinese grocery stores have larger and better product selections at more appealing prices, comparing to T&T. However, T&T still gets a decent share of my wallet, only because its new Richmond Hill store is close to my home.

She deserves it

Finally watched "The Iron Lady" and Meryl Streep really deserves the Oscar, even though she does not really need it to prove herself after so many nominations and two previous Acadamy Awards.  I have always been believing Meryl Streep is gifted and is born to be an actress. The contemporary history of movie would dim significantly without her. For so many years she has given us one suprise after another. Meryl was really shining a few years back in "Devil Wears Prada". That was a simply Hollywood cliche that had been reproduced into many versions. The only difference here was Meryl Streep. Her performance made this movie a masterpiece.

Before I watched this movie, I forecast The Iron Lady would win the Oscar for make-up. My reason was based on a word of a master artist of China from 0ver 1,300 years ago. When the emporor asked him whether it was wasier to paint a ghost or to paint a human being. He answered human being, because he could paint a ghost whatever way he liked to as nobody had seen a ghost, while on the opposite side anyone could comment on his painting of a human being as all knew what a person looked like. The other two nominations, Albert Nobbs and Harry Potter both fall under the 'painting a ghost' category, but the Iron Lady is a real person, which makes the make-up much more challenging.

The same logic applies to acting. That's why I say Meryl deserves it. Plus, she really really did a great job showing us the ex British prime minister deeply into her brain and her heart.