Gift basket campaign to push Tops
Despite the flooding, leading supermarket chain Central Food Retail has high hopes of maintaining its target of 8-per-cent year-on-year revenue growth to Bt20 billion, especially after launching a New Year gift-basket campaign.
The time is approaching to celebrate the festive season’s tradition of giving, so the company has earmarked about Bt55 million for its “Appreciation of Miracles 2012” campaign, running from this month into January, Phattaraporn Phenpraphat, vice-president for marketing and public relations at Central Food Retail, said yesterday.
More than 500 festive items have been prepared to celebrate the New Year along with an offer of 28-per-cent discounts to boost consumers’ confidence to spend their money on this special occasion as well as to stimulate the local economy while the flood waters recede.
“The campaign is based on three concepts, Live, Love, and Luck, representing the love, happiness and luck enjoyed by receivers and givers,” said Chiranun Poopat, senior vice president for buying and marketing and for retail and merchandising. “This is a great opportunity for us all to give best wishes to one another.”
Meanwhile, Nick Reitmeier, vice president for international food and wine, said that this year the company was focusing on imported products from around the world including Turkey, Spain, Israel, Scotland, England, the United States and Germany.
Phattaraporn said that after launching the catalogue for this campaign to corporate customers, the company anticipated strong inquiries even though businesses in many provinces had been severely inundated. The prices of the most popular gift baskets range between Bt1,500 and Bt3,000. Tops and Central Food Hall are expected to capture about 50 per cent of this particular market.
She said the market for New Year gift baskets this year was expected to grow by 5-7 per cent to at least Bt780 million from last year’s Bt740 million. Central Food Retail aims for a 2-percentage-point increase in its market share to 37 per cent of total sales of New Year gift basket market from last year’s 35 per cent.
The company targets sales of Bt500 million from this campaign. Of this, Bt300 million will come from the New Year baskets and the remainder from other products. Overall revenue this year is aimed at Bt20 billion, an 8-per-cent increase from last year’s.
Though the assessment of business losses due to the flooding has not been completed, the company estimates they will be at least Bt100 million after about 30 branches were forced to shut down. All of them should have reopened by today.
The company is optimistic that next year’s revenue will continue to grow, so it has earmarked about Bt1 billion for 200 new Tops Daily branches. By the end of this year, it will have 212 branches of Tops Super, Tops Market and Tops Daily.
