There's an old joke in the supermarket industry that if a shopper were dropped in Aisle 3 of almost any store he wouldn't know where he is because they all look alike.
"They are plain vanilla," said Bill Bishop, chairman of Willard Bishop Consulting, an Illinois-based retail advisory company.
But that is changing, as traditional stores attempt to redefine themselves and new competitors enter the market, increasing pressures for the grocery dollar, Bishop said. "All of a sudden, people are getting more choices."
The supermarkets haven't done anything wrong, but they have to rethink how they do business or they could face going belly up, he said by phone. And how they react is going to affect the way we shop.
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