Meet the Client
King Soopers, a division of the Kroger Corp. (NYSE: KR) and the #1 U.S. grocery chain, operates about 130 stores in Colorado. Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Kroger Company (NYSE:KR) is one of the nation’s largest grocery retailers, with fiscal 2003 sales of $53.8 billion. The Kroger Company spans many states with store formats that include grocery, multi-department, convenience, and mall jewelry stores. They operate under nearly two-dozen banners, all of which share the same belief in building strong local ties and brand loyalty with their customers.
The Challenge
Despite being a well-known location for buying discounted ski lift tickets, baseball, concert, and amusement park tickets, King Soopers was faced with a dilemma: how to better handle their extremely high ticket sale volumes. Previous attempts to encourage their ticketing system provider (TicketsWest) to develop a self-service kiosk solution were failures due to high start-up costs, and limited experience managing remote controlled automated devices. How could King Soopers capitalize on the concept of using self-service to help manage heavy sales volumes without substantially affecting their long time relationship with TicketsWest?
Customer Convenience
Efficient Use of Staff
Ability to Change Ticket Pricing Real-Time
The Solution
Upon reading of the success of Livewire in the Colorado ski lift ticket arena, the King Soopers team approached the York, PA based company with an idea. If Livewire could partner with TicketsWest and King Soopers, Livewire could deploy ticketing kiosks to their top ten highest volume stores immediately. Livewire, recently awarded “Best Retail Kiosk Application” by several industry associations, was up for the challenge.
Utilizing their existing ticketing kiosk software and remote management system, Livewire developed the self-service application and integrated a custom King Soopers user interface into the kiosk enclosure. What was created was a customized solution that not only achieved the goal technically; it was also attractive to the consumer and coincided with the grocery store’s brand image of a modern, full-service grocery store chain.
After its installation in early November, the kiosks were instantly utilized and took a large portion of typical in-store sales away from the busy customer service counters. Livewire’s real-time monitoring system allowed King Sooper’s management to track sales as well as manage inventory. According to ownership, Livewire kiosks processed about 20% of total store ticket sales.