Five weeks ago, Whole Foods made headlines for cutting prices on a series of popular grocery items. The move marked an effort by its new owner, Amazon, to erase its Whole Paycheck reputation and broaden its customer base.
As it turns out, the gimmick netted Whole Foods a lot of attention, but it didn’t significantly change its demographics, a new survey showed Tuesday. And, another survey finds customers have barely seen the benefit of the lower prices that the brand so heavily touted.
Whole Foods definitely picked up traffic when it cut prices on items including avocados, rotisserie chicken and bananas on Aug. 28, according to a study released Tuesday by the Thasos Group. It analyzes information from location data on millions of mobile phones.
Reuters reported that the study found customer traffic on the first day of the markdowns jumped 31 percent from a year earlier. Overall, traffic was up 17 percent during the week after the price reductions, and was still four percent higher for the week ended Sept. 16, about two weeks after the lower prices began.
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