Retain-the-name questions.

Is it really wise to retain traditional name banners when ownership changes? Does it make solid business sense, or is it done because the old name is assumed to have equity for which the new owners are paying millions of dollars?.

We asked our shoppers how they felt about name retention and got an earful. The bottom line of what we heard is that the shopping experience counts more than the name, and if the shopping experience changes, keeping the old name may be counterproductive.

We asked shoppers about this when we heard that the next major department store merger would probably result in dropping nostalgic regional names. We wondered: Does maintaining local names make sense in the age of takeovers? Banks have been answering that question in the negative for years, but retailers have stuck with the tradition for a lot of reasons that may or may not be sound.

Here in Philadelphia, the space that shoppers once knew as Wanamaker's is now called Lord & Taylor. The main Bonwit Teller store is now called Daffy's. What was Girard Bank is now a Ritz Carlton and the venerable PSFS (Philadelphia Savings Fund Society) is now a Loews Hotel. The old Strawbridge & Clothier stores are now called just Strawbridge's and are really Hecht's. Other department store chains have simply disappeared. So much for department stores. The old Reading Terminal train station is a long-standing and very successful farmers market that trades on its history as well as its merchandise.

When it comes to supermarkets, Pantry Pride, Food Fair, and Penn Fruit have disappeared, as has Acme's Super Saver division, but some old banners have been retained. (Super Saver failed in Philly but is now being introduced in Tampa by Albertsons' "Extreme Division" to describe a "new" discount format.)

I'd hedge my bets on Super Saver, but the idea of having an "extreme division" sounds pretty exciting.) Acme Markets, now part of Albertsons, are still called Acme Markets. Philly's A&P's have morphed into stores named Super Fresh. Genuardi's stores, a regional Philly chain which has been acquired by Safeway, are still called Genuardi's. Super G's (the name Giant of Landover uses in the South Jersey part of the Philly market) are now part of Stop & Shop and Ahold but are still called Super G. Does any of this matter to shoppers?

We put the name-retention question to a multi-market cross section of our shoppers, asking them to mark a response from "Doesn't matter at all to "Means a lot".

Seventy percent said that retaining department store names didn't matter at all to them. Fifteen percent said that it matters some or a lot.

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When it came to supermarkets, seventy five percent said that retaining local supermarket names didn't matter at all to them. Twenty percent said that it mattered some. Not one respondent said that it mattered a lot!

In addition to asking them to circle a response, we asked the following question about both department stores and supermarkets: "If you think the name matters, please try to explain why."

Our question may have been a leading one, but the responses suggest that biting the name bullet might make more sense and retain more shoppers than holding onto old names while changing layouts, policies, and merchandise.

* "They still call it Acme but it isn't Acme anymore. It's something I don't recognize and I feel cheated when I shop there so I've pretty much stopped."

* "Genuardi's wasn't and isn't Genuardi's anymore. I stopped shopping there and go out of my way to shop elsewhere."

* "They keep the name and some of the people but the products and the prices change. It wouldn't be so aggravating if they changed the name of the store. If they keep the name, it seems like they should keep the same assortment and brand choices."

* "If Safeway takes over my local chain, I will have no choice but to shop at Whole Foods."

* "What matters in a takeover are the changes in merchandise. Why are they so seldom for the better?"

One respondent went beyond banner changes to what's happening inside the stores:

* "Our Giant Eagle hasn't been acquired but it has been dropping national brands like Del Monte tomatoes and only carrying their inferior brand. Is that what we have to look forward to--no choices? One department store, Macy's? One grocery store, Safeway? One sells-everything-you-need-and-if-we-don't-carry-it-you-don't-really-need-it store, Wal-Mart? Where's the competition? Is this the American way?"

An especially articulate respondent used the Lands' End example to illustrate her feelings:

* "Lands' End has been kept as a name, but, Dorothy, we're not in Dodgeville anymore. What was a wonderful, dependable merchant of wearable clothes is now Sears (and redolent of Kmart) dressed up in a name that had earned its cachet. They could call it anything--if you relied on Lands' End for quality, you can forget it ... My last order was a case in point--three defective garments at higher prices than they deserved, even if they hadn't been defective. The cost of shipping was my headache, despite the obvious defects, and to add insult to injury, I didn't get a full refund when I returned the stuff to Sears--I was charged a state tax on shipping! Does it matter to me that the catalog is still called Lands' End? Only if I have lost my capacity to learn from experience. So to answer your question, if the name matters to me, that's a problem! Kmart/Sears "Lands' End" is no more Lands' End than the wolf is Riding Hood's Grandma."

(This shopper's assessment helps to explain why, according to a report in Women's Wear Daily, Sears is seeking a buyer for Lands' End at an asking price below the $1.9 billion it paid in 2002.)