Tobacco Meets Loyalty, Scams Are Preventable, and The Shifting Fuel Market

The first day of the NACS Show offered education sessions on topics including commissaries, store growth, modernization, merchandising, store design and community engagement, among others.

I chose to spend the day focusing on how tobacco and loyalty can work together, common scams and an outlook of the fuel market.

Jessica Starnes, director of loyalty and tobacco category manager for Weigel’s, and Kathy Williams, senior category manager at TXB, shared their insights during “Puff, Purchase, Repeat — Winning With Tobacco Loyalty,” along with Jayme Gough, director of research & development for NACS.

“Tobacco and loyalty already work together. The question is who is getting paid for it,” said Williams.

According to Starnes, tobacco customers visit more often, and tobacco is one of the most-purchased categories at c-stores. In fact, 60% of tobacco transactions at Weigel’s have loyalty IDs attached.

The three challenges to keep in mind, she continued, are communications, expectations and analytics.

“Tobacco is too big to not be measuring, so you must know your data,” she said.

Williams and Starnes both shared case studies to show the different ways tobacco and loyalty can coincide, including one that had the end result of drawing tobacco customers from elsewhere, such as smoke shops.

During “Is this a Scam? Protecting Your Phone Lines,” Heather Hearn, supervisor of e-commerce fraud and physical security for Wawa, and Courtney Trieger, manager of retail asset protection support, Cumberland Farms, used a game show format to reveal the many different types of scams facing c-store retailers.

“Great fraud prevention spots the red flags without saying everything is guilty,” said Hearn.

Still, some steps can be taken to avoid the scams: verify every banking change, stop and think if the request is urgent or unusual, create codewords and update point-of-sale firmware.

Also, communicate both with internal teams and other retailers; if you suspect you’re getting scammed, chances are other retailers are, as well.

My last session of the day was “Outlook for Fuel Markets — What to Expect with Supplies and Prices?” Debnil Chowdhury, VP, Americas head of refining and marketing for S&P Global, and Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst for OPIS, A Dow Jones Co., led the conversation, moderated by John Eichberger, executive director, Transportation Energy Institute.

A few of the group’s conclusions were that the product markets continue to respond differently than crude markets and regional refining availability continues to influence balances.

As the fuel market shifts week by week, retailers should factor volatility into their fuel strategy.

You need to figure out how to win that customer as soon as possible in their journey, Eichberger said. “Own that mindshare.”