Kroger Invests in Employees; Builds Lasting Brand Loyalty

Like Great Eastern Energy, Kroger continues to invest in its employees for greater engagement, both within the company and with customers. As a result, Kroger enjoys ongoing deep brand loyalty.

“We demonstrate our long-term focus by continuing to invest for the future,” Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said during Thursday’s first-quarter results announcement. “We are making investments in our people, our digital and online capabilities, and our strategic partnerships. Across the board, Kroger has an incredibly strong management team and a deep bench of leaders who are making us better every day. We continue to make strategic investments in leadership development and training for all of our associates, including high-volume store managers and future senior leaders.”

McMullen noted that many people come to Kroger for work and the company creates opportunities for all associates to build a career.

“Despite record-low unemployment figures, when we held a one-day hiring event in every supermarket location in May, we received more than 116,000 applications,” he said. “From that pool, we hired more than 12,000 new associates. We see our Opportunity Culture as a competitive advantage.”

What’s more, Kroger is expanding its digital presence and “marching steadily toward a time when we can provide our customers with anything, anytime, anywhere,” McMullen explained. “We are taking a disciplined approach to digital growth, testing new offerings in local markets so we can make sure we get it right before we scale offerings more broadly. Our ClickList and ExpressLane offerings are now available in 25 markets, with more to come. Our merger with Harris Teeter gave us a base of learnings that allowed us to ramp up quickly the development of ClickList. Customers now have downloaded nearly three billion digital coupons and offers from our mobile app and website.”

Earlier this week, Kroger’s technology business unit was named one of the Top 100 places to work by Computerworld magazine.

“We are obviously very proud of this honor,” McMullen said. “We’ve launched a new website, kroger.com/livekt, to connect with and recruit top talent from around the world to join the Kroger team. Similarly, we are finding out that ClickList also serves as a great tool to both hire and retain great people. Kroger is a terrific place for tech talent to build careers because the technology they create can improve the lives of millions of customers each and every day. Kroger’s core business is solid. We are providing exceptional customer service and the highest quality, freshest products. Customers are giving us higher marks for better product selection and store layout, as well as friendlier service. We remain focused on customer loyalty that grows tonnage and both our top and bottom lines, which then creates value for shareholders.”

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