Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

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Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by Bagels »

I stopped by Albertsons (near UCI) and Pavilions (Newport Coast) yesterday. Neither had printed ads, instead they had a notice saying their ads had gone digital, along with instructions on how to view the ad. We no longer receive printed ads delivered to our home (in my area, they were delivered weekly by a newspaper carrier; however, the package was deemed to be litter).

Is Albertsons ending printed ads across the chain? I recall Ralphs trying this in the mid-2010s, but it didn't last. Maybe now's the time?
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Portland ad market

Post by SamSpade »

Fred Meyer appears to have severed its relationship with The Oregonian other than a small insert on Sundays. (they did move to Wed-Tue ads a few years ago)

"Safeway Albertsons" (as the folks out here seem to say), QFC, Fred Meyer, Rite Aid and CVS all continue in a weekly mailer from one of the newspaper coupon insert manufacturers.
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by Super S »

With so many grocery stores requiring cards, apps, etc. to even buy anything at sale prices, is there really a point to printed ads any more?

I have not had a newspaper subscription in over 10 years, mainly due to continuous, regular issues with delivery. In several areas where I have lived, there used to be some kind of "community" edition paper sent out midweek which contained various supermarket ads, but I have not seen this locally in several years, and am not sure if this is still a thing. I do sometimes get assorted coupons in the mail but usually I take a quick look and throw it away as they are mostly local businesses I don't shop at.

I will sometimes stock up on an item if I happen to see something I buy regularly on sale, but I don't plan any shopping around this.
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by rwsandiego »

Albertsons/Safeway still sends weekly ads in Phoenix, as do Fry's, El Super, Ranch Market, AJ's, Sprouts, and Food City. Interestingly, Bashas' is closer to me than Food City but they don't send ads to my area.

I rarely read the ads because I just buy what I want/need. Being single I am less price-sensitive than if I had a family or were on a fixed income. Sometimes I will stock up on items I use frequently (I'm looking at you, O-Organics Instant Oatmeal and Cracker Barrel Vermont White Cheddar).
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by storewanderer »

The problem with this at Albertsons/Safeway is they issue so many in-ad paper coupons. Historically you could do the load to card option via their app if you wanted but if you didn't want to mess around with the app you could just grab the paper coupon from the ad and could still get the promotion price.

Walgreens and CVS both stopped doing print ads too. CVS of course still prints coupons like crazy with your receipt and Walgreens has an extensive digital coupon website but in-store at Walgreens there are few to no references to the digital coupons. Additionally Walgreens still has a monthly paper coupon book (those are advertised on shelf tags) so again for people who don't want to do the digital thing they can still get the deals using those paper coupons.

It doesn't surprise me that the poorly run Vons division would implement this sort of half baked idea while other better run divisions of Albertsons like AZ continue to offer the option of print ads. I am a little surprised from a competitive standpoint Vons did this given how much competition there is in SoCal; if Ralphs follows their lead this idea may stick in the SoCal market. And it will cause yet another segment of shoppers (those who look at the weekly ads) to stop paying attention to the Vons.

This idea may work better in NorCal however. It is less price sensitive and has less competition. The competition runs what can best be described as marginal print ads at best and pretty small ads. I get all of the ads every week and typically the only ones I keep to refer to before shopping during the week are Safeway and Smiths. Raleys, Smart and Final, and Save Mart ads get a quick glance over to mentally record the few items I want from Raleys each week and then about every 4 weeks something pops out at Save Mart that I want to get, and then immediately go into the recycling bin. Smart and Final- can't remember the last time anything in that ad caught my interest. Safeway's print ad is always the biggest with the most promotions (by most measures probably too many; cumbersome almost) and the aggressiveness of the promotions overall has gotten much better under Albertsons.
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: March 20th, 2021, 10:09 pm Walgreens and CVS both stopped doing print ads too. CVS of course still prints coupons like crazy with your receipt and Walgreens has an extensive digital coupon website but in-store at Walgreens there are few to no references to the digital coupons. Additionally Walgreens still has a monthly paper coupon book (those are advertised on shelf tags) so again for people who don't want to do the digital thing they can still get the deals using those paper coupons.
The CVS thing must be only in some areas - we still get their ads in the newspaper and they always have them in the stores. Walgreens did stop printing ads here.
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by storewanderer »

BillyGr wrote: March 21st, 2021, 11:56 am
storewanderer wrote: March 20th, 2021, 10:09 pm Walgreens and CVS both stopped doing print ads too. CVS of course still prints coupons like crazy with your receipt and Walgreens has an extensive digital coupon website but in-store at Walgreens there are few to no references to the digital coupons. Additionally Walgreens still has a monthly paper coupon book (those are advertised on shelf tags) so again for people who don't want to do the digital thing they can still get the deals using those paper coupons.
The CVS thing must be only in some areas - we still get their ads in the newspaper and they always have them in the stores. Walgreens did stop printing ads here.
Interesting. This wouldn't be the first time CVS did a test with ads in my area. A couple years ago they tried a thing here where (in NV) they only ran one ad every two weeks so the ad was good two weeks. So we missed out on half of their promotions. But I could drive 45 minutes just over the state line into CA and CVS there still ran weekly ads every week (so could get all of the promotions).
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by pseudo3d »

Super S wrote: March 19th, 2021, 7:38 am With so many grocery stores requiring cards, apps, etc. to even buy anything at sale prices, is there really a point to printed ads any more?

I have not had a newspaper subscription in over 10 years, mainly due to continuous, regular issues with delivery. In several areas where I have lived, there used to be some kind of "community" edition paper sent out midweek which contained various supermarket ads, but I have not seen this locally in several years, and am not sure if this is still a thing. I do sometimes get assorted coupons in the mail but usually I take a quick look and throw it away as they are mostly local businesses I don't shop at.

I will sometimes stock up on an item if I happen to see something I buy regularly on sale, but I don't plan any shopping around this.
Kroger's card system just allows you to punch in your phone number at checkout. A bit annoying, but it's tolerable, and I still go to Kroger sometimes because there's a few items that H-E-B no longer [consistently] carries for some reason or another (smaller bottles of Frank's Red Hot, Claussen pickles, kumquats, the list goes on).

I know H-E-B finally got on the mobile app and briefly discontinued their yellow pull-off coupons (found throughout the store) for a "scan the barcode with the app" system but they reverted, guess they got too many complaints.

If they want to save money by not sending them out in circulars--fine. But that's a disadvantage when every other store does. When I lived in Houston, I didn't subscribe to a paper, but I still got ads for every grocery store in town anyway...H-E-B, Randalls, Kroger, Fiesta, Foodarama, and at least one other independent.

The in-store printed ads at least help you get a feel for what's on sale and get inspired for new recipes, there are plenty of older and lower-income shoppers that would hate the idea of printed ads ending, and frankly, trying to pull my phone out constantly is annoying.
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by storewanderer »

pseudo3d wrote: March 21st, 2021, 1:56 pm
Kroger's card system just allows you to punch in your phone number at checkout. A bit annoying, but it's tolerable, and I still go to Kroger sometimes because there's a few items that H-E-B no longer [consistently] carries for some reason or another (smaller bottles of Frank's Red Hot, Claussen pickles, kumquats, the list goes on).

I know H-E-B finally got on the mobile app and briefly discontinued their yellow pull-off coupons (found throughout the store) for a "scan the barcode with the app" system but they reverted, guess they got too many complaints.

If they want to save money by not sending them out in circulars--fine. But that's a disadvantage when every other store does. When I lived in Houston, I didn't subscribe to a paper, but I still got ads for every grocery store in town anyway...H-E-B, Randalls, Kroger, Fiesta, Foodarama, and at least one other independent.

The in-store printed ads at least help you get a feel for what's on sale and get inspired for new recipes, there are plenty of older and lower-income shoppers that would hate the idea of printed ads ending, and frankly, trying to pull my phone out constantly is annoying.
I think a number of stores with no card pricing also have digital coupon apps that are phone number based. I'm not sure as I'm not signed up for any of those but I am pretty sure even WinCo has a digital coupon app with phone number entry at checkout if you want it.

One issue is Albertsons let's call it past marketing when they got rid of the loyalty card the first time. They have been very careful so far to not require the card for sale pricing but seem to be pushing further and further toward twisting people's arms into using the Safeway loyalty program at the Albertsons banner- stopping the print ads/paper coupons would definitely be another step.

I actually kind of like how it is done in the Albertsons banner where there is no card required for base sale prices but then the card is required if you want the digital offers or gas points. It seems like a fair compromise between the no card-pay full price for everything model typically employed.
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Re: Albertsons Ending Printed Ads?

Post by Bagels »

For clarification, Albertsons, Vons & Pavilions are no longer carrying printed ads in-stores, but I have no idea if they're still distributing them to local residences -> in my region, the weekly RedPlum ad package that was distributed via mail switched delivery mediums to the weekly "free" community newspaper (published by the OC Reigster); however, in Irvine, the paper is considered litter/subject to fines/thus not distributed.
BillyGr wrote: March 21st, 2021, 11:56 am
storewanderer wrote: March 20th, 2021, 10:09 pm Walgreens and CVS both stopped doing print ads too. CVS of course still prints coupons like crazy with your receipt and Walgreens has an extensive digital coupon website but in-store at Walgreens there are few to no references to the digital coupons. Additionally Walgreens still has a monthly paper coupon book (those are advertised on shelf tags) so again for people who don't want to do the digital thing they can still get the deals using those paper coupons.
The CVS thing must be only in some areas - we still get their ads in the newspaper and they always have them in the stores. Walgreens did stop printing ads here.
CVS ended printed ads here as well - ironically, right before last year's Holiday season...
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