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Ranchers.net

Nation's Leading Retailers Offer Their Predictions


The Food Marketing Institute recently posed a series of potential scenarios to the nation's leading retailers, asking for their opinions on their likelihood. Here, in order, are the results.

High-fat/high-calorie foods
will carry warning labels. Nearly 50% see this happening in the next five years, and almost 90% say this will happen over the next decade, a level of certainty well beyond any of the other questions asked.

Large chains will spin off divisions and get smaller.
More than one-third of respondents see this happening in the next five years, but this is far from a widely accepted outcome. Some 40% of respondents say this will never happen -- not in a decade or longer.

All products will carry country-of-origin information.
Fewer than 30% see this happening in the next five years, but 82% say it will happen by 2015.

Credit and debit cards will account for 90% of sales.
Only 25.5% see this happening over the next five years, but more than 85% of retailers say this will happen over the next decade.

SKU counts will decline significantly.
Discussions will continue about how much inventory or food stocks
is right for the store. 22% say SKU counts will decline significantly in the next five years, and 45% say it will happen by 2015. (SKU, or stock keeping unit, is a unique code assigned to a product by a retailer for ID and inventory control.)

A majority of retailers envision three realities by 2015, even though in each case the percentage seeing great change in the next five years was fairly small -- 80% believe bio-engineered foods will become commonplace in 10 years;

74% think unleaded gasoline will cost $5/gal. (the survey was largely conducted in early spring, well before the summer hike in gas prices); and 66% believe self-scanning checkouts will outnumber staffed lanes.
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