評論
打印
Man: Instead of making it a national campaign, which would allow Williams's rivals to instantly follow its price cuts, the company's ‘best deals', as they're called, vary from town to town, and change every week. The company employs five thousand distributors in order that, every week, a third of all the people living in the catchment area of a Williams store receive flyers through their doors, detailing these special offers. The price cuts are dramatic, like forty per cent off breakfast cereals, the same off bars of soap, fifty per cent off soft drinks, and so on. Indeed, many items are sold at below the cost to Williams.
男子：塔克爾并沒有在全國范圍內搞促銷，因為這樣一來威廉姆斯的競爭對手么立刻就能跟著降價，而是在不同城鎮推不同的所謂“最惠商品”，而且每周都換。超市還特地招了5000人專門發傳單，確保每家威廉姆斯超市覆蓋范圍內三分之一的人的家門前每周都能收到打折信息的傳單。他們打折的力度也很夸張，早餐麥片六折，肥皂六折，軟飲料五折等等。很多商品的確都是在虧本出售。
Shoppers seem to love it, as is evident from Williams's sales. But it's high risk: sales have to increase by enough to limit the impact on profits, and they have to be able to deliver the goods. That's harder than it sounds. Some of the products on offer fly out of the door, selling as much in a week as they normally would in a year. Organising adequate stock levels for that, on different products around the country, is a nightmare of logistics. What makes all this feasible, apart from very good planning, is that Williams's distribution system isn't centralized, unlike some of the other supermarket chains.
消費者們似乎很吃這一套，這一點從威廉姆斯的業績上也能看出來。然而這樣做也有很高的風險：只有銷售總額達到一定規模這樣虧本銷售才不會影響利潤，而且他們還要能夠配送。配送是聽起來容易做起來難。因為部分促銷商品十分暢銷，一周就能達到平時一年的銷售額。要準備足夠的倉儲，而且不同地方還要準備不同的商品，對物流來說簡直是個噩夢。讓這一切變得可行的，除了十分明智的規劃之外，還有一點就是威廉姆斯的配送系統并不是集中化的，不像其他一些超市連鎖品牌。
Williams has just passed the first anniversary of its promotional campaign, so it'll be more and more difficult to keep sales rising. But the company's working hard to keep the momentum going with a renewed focus on fresh produce, having been tempted in recent years by clothing and electrical goods, which are both in highly competitive sectors. the company has also promised longer opening hours at their stores in order to increase convenience for their customers.
威廉姆斯剛剛舉行了促銷活動的周年紀念，所以要想保持業績持續增長會越來越難。但超市正在將促銷活動的注意力重新集中在新鮮農產品上，努力保住這一增長勢頭。而近年來超市偏向青睞服裝和電子產品，因為兩者都是競爭非常激烈的產品領域。超市還承諾為了方便顧客延長店鋪營業時間。
Now let's compare Williams's success with one of their suffering rivals…
接下來，我們來比較一下威廉姆斯的成功和遭受損失的其他對手……
