Introduction
The grocery industry is a labyrinthine maze of incorporated systems and procedures, but its enduring common denominator is people. Without committed, competent and coordinated efforts of personnel, grocery networks become impotent. Given the pivotal role that people play in ’making everything happen’, this essay is provoked by convictions that people are and continue to be grocery retailers’ most valuable resource and greatest business concern, their successful management requiring substantial investment of time, effort and expertise. The fact that people live and work in the context of relationships is the raison d’être behind this essay’s assumption that regardless the degree of amendments made to technologies (software and hardware) and techniques utilised by grocery organisations, effective management of people and relationships will remain.
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This essay is dedicated to general exploration of the concept that effective implementation of relationship marketing and internal marketing programs are of greatest long-term significance to grocers and expounding their latent cumulative benefits should alleviate excessive trepidation over most other industry concerns
(circumventing the necessity for specific reference to present and future industry related business and technology challenges).
Examples incorporating shop floor personnel herein are basically illustrative; outlined marketing initiatives do not target them exclusively and they have no greater or lesser importance to organisational outcomes than other industry personnel. This paper firstly considers the importance of generating a robust organisational culture through utilisation of image differentiation, recruitment and indoctrination inside the adoption of a targeted long-term strategy known as ’employer branding’. Secondly, it proposes internal