Wawa Puts Coupons Outdoors

Customers who visit a Wawa store in Pennsylvania know its roots as a 100-year-old dairy that became a convenience store 40 years ago and now also sells gas. But as the company expanded into neighboring states, the need to communicate its offerings -- inside and out -- with customers became even more important.A month-long promotion that ran in Virginia and southern Maryland was designed to erase the misperception in many consumers' minds that Wawa is simply a gas station. "They don't understand the inside offers of the store," says Dan Freney, market manager."We've done a really good job of informing the consumer base that we have a dairy and food-service history and our sales have been growing tremendously," Freney says. "Over the last 40 years, we've developed one of the most impressive food service/beverage offers in the c-store industry," he says. "But we felt there was an opportunity to get those people who were just filling up their cars and going inside the store."So, Wawa created a coupon offer that customers could grab at the pump. Working with Dayton, Ohio-based Outta The Box Dispensers LLC, each gas pump (12 to 20 per site in 75 locations) featured a weatherproof dispenser during the month of October. Coupons for a free 32-ounce Coca-Cola fountain drink with the purchase of a "shorti hoagie" were designed to get customers in the store.Freney says the company has had similar coupon-dispensing units inside its stores for many promotions in the past, and "we like how the product looks inside the store. The one challenge we foresaw with wanting to use an identical type of item on the gas pump, however, was how it would hold up to weather." The dispensers, which attached with an adhesive were made of a clay-coated paper that withstood rain, snow and inclement conditions. Although the units were designed to last for the month-long promotional period, Freney says some dispensers were replaced sooner when the 120 coupons were gone.They measured 6-1/2 inches wide and 8 inches tall, and they protruded less than an inch from the gas pumps. Freney says he visited stores during the promotion and managers reported that these clings worked like any other cling inside the stores, and that there were no wear and tear issues due to weather.The average redemption rate of the coupons was 5%, which Freney says is "a decent redemption" for the first time the company had a coupon offer at the gas pump.

Wawa Puts Coupons Outdoors

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI

Related Images

Business Topic

Company

Market Segment