Big Lots 2015 Annual Report Download - page 100

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In addition to electronic, social and digital media, our marketing communication efforts involve a mix of television advertising,
printed ad circulars, and in-store signage. The primary goals of our television advertising are to promote our brand and, from
time to time, promote products or special discounts in our stores. Our printed advertising circulars and our in-store signage
initiatives focus on promoting our value proposition on our unique merchandise offerings.
Shopping Experience
In 2014, we began the roll-out of two capital investment programs - coolers and freezers and point-of-sale (“POS”) systems
upgrade - which continued into 2015.
Based on customer feedback, we determined that our core customer could not complete a portion of the weekly grocery
shopping in our stores, as we did not offer refrigerated and frozen food products needed to complete her basket. Accordingly,
we tested a cooler and freezer program in approximately 100 stores in 2013. The goal of the program was to increase the
convenience of the shopping experience for our core customer in our Food category. Our test results were positive; and, as a
result, we implemented our cooler and freezer program in an additional 650 stores by the end of the third quarter of 2014.
During the spring of 2015, we completed the roll-out of our cooler and freezer program, through installations at an additional
550 locations. We now have approximately 1,300 stores with coolers and freezers. The introduction of coolers and freezers,
and the associated product assortment, assisted us in becoming authorized to accept customer benefits qualifying for certain
governmental assistance programs, such as the supplemental nutrition assistance program (“SNAP”), which has provided our
customers with another source of funds to spend at our stores. We believe this program will continue to drive comps in both
our Food and Consumables categories, as we strive to improve our execution surrounding product flow and assortment, based
on our learnings in this new offering area.
During 2014, we also began a POS systems upgrade program. We chose to invest in an upgrade to our POS systems to improve
the speed of transactions, increase functionality, and reduce our maintenance burden as our prior hardware was nearing the end
of its useful life. We completed the roll-out of our new POS systems during 2015.
In 2015, we increased our investment in our store teams, through training and refined roles and responsibilities, to provide our
customers with a more consistent store experience. During 2015, a major focus of the business was investing in our store teams
through the roll-out of store operations initiatives designed to aid our store associates in delivering more consistent customer
service experiences. These initiatives included the following:
• Redefining roles and responsibilities for our store associates by delineating our team into two primary areas - customer
service and replenishment - which narrows responsibilities of, and provides greater focus to, our team members. We
intend to improve our customer’s shopping experience through providing team members with the primary
responsibility of catering to our customer’s needs.
• Implementing a new scheduling system, which focused on ensuring we have store associates staffed during Jennifer’s
core shopping windows.
• Standardizing our training program for our furniture sales managers to improve the consistency of the Furniture
category shopping experience between stores.
Also during 2014 and 2015, we have been developing and testing an e-commerce platform to enter into the online marketplace.
Our efforts have been focused on designing and building an integrated platform with our retail infrastructure to enhance our
core customer’s shopping experience. Additionally, we developed our customer support model for our e-commerce activities.
In 2016, we will complete the build and integration of our e-commerce platform into our business operations, and we expect to
begin selling merchandise online in the first quarter of 2016.
Currently, we offer our Easy Leasing lease-to-purchase program, which provides a single use opportunity for access to
financing through a third party. We also expect to launch, through a third party, a private label credit card in 2016, which will
provide another financing opportunity to our customers. Our private label credit card program will provide qualified customers
with access to a revolving credit vehicle and give us the ability to market to those customers.