Jordan Yencha

Depth Interview

MKTG325 Sec.2

Interview Goals:

- To gain an understanding of where Sunnyside Superette stands in the current market of

Morgantown convenience stores.

- To illuminate the changes Sunnyside Superette has endured due to recent competition &

adaptations.

- To highlight the main competitors and how Sunnyside Superette plans to get ahead.

Interview Format & Rationale:

- For this interview of a convenience store manager, I figured a face-to-face

communication would supply sufficient information (verbal and nonverbal) to answer the

interview goals I have proposed above.

Interview Questions:

1. When did you become the manager at Sunnyside Superette?

2. How do you like it?

a. Favorite things

b. Annoyances

3. Have you ever noticed significant changes to the traffic the Superette experiences?

a. What things effect the traffic?

i. Seasonal

ii. Old Sunnyside houses compared to new dorms

iii. Events

b. What can you do as a manager to respond to these things?

i. Does the strategy work?

4. What makes the Superette stand out?

a. Strengths

b. Weaknesses

5. Who is your biggest competitor?

a. What can they do that you can’t?

b. What can you do that they can’t?

6. If you could change something about the Superette to make it more

competitive/profitable, what would you do? (Ignoring financials)

7. What does the Superette do for marketing/advertising?

a. Does it work?

b. Can it be improved?

c. What would you like to see changed?

i. How can these changes be implemented?

Script of Actual Interview:

Interviewer – Jordan Yencha, Interviewee – Mark Demasi: Sunnyside Superette Manager

Jordan – “So when did you become the manager of the Sunnyside Superette?”

Mark – “Oh, I was hired as the manager, it was probably… 2008.”

Jordan – “Shew, 2008… do you love it? Like it?”

Mark – “Yea, it’s a good job. Pays me well.”

Jordan – “Favorite things about it?”

Mark – “Oh, it’s mainly the people, and it’s uh… the people and the customers. It’s a laid

back area. Uh, and it’s a good person to work for.”

Jordan – “What about anything that annoys you about working here?”

Mark – “No, not really. I mean it’s just, it’s just like any job, ya know?”

Jordan – “Yep.”

Mark – “Ya go day to day.”

Jordan – “You guys, I was uh, I remember over the summer we talked about it a few

times but uh, do you guys have like significant changes whenever like certain things go

around like seasonal?”

Mark – “We’re a 9 month business, like, we do all our business during the school year,

but we make the majority of our money during football season. Basketball season doesn’t

pull the people like football does.”

Jordan – “Yea. What about like uh, you’ve been here for a while so you saw like

whenever Sunnyside used to have houses and Mutt’s was here…”

Mark – “Yea, uh, that’s not really... the first thing that hurt us on business was life

sciences building. Cause traffic flow for walking needs to be they walk out of summit,

turn right, and come down University, and they built life sciences, they put in the double

doors. Now they walk outta Summit, go down Grant, cut through the double doors. Go all

the way down.”

Jordan – “Yea.”

Mark – “So that was the first change in business. But I mean, that comes with it, but you

do see a big difference in the party scene from the houses to the dorms.”

Jordan – “Right.”

Mark – “And it’s not even really that, it’s… these students don’t party like they used to,

not even close. I mean, you’re talkin’, we used to run our store like a bar where you bring

up 2 people, let ‘em out, let 2 people in. Ya know? We would have 300 people in here.

Easily. But, it’s… it’s all over town. I mean like, my Budweiser guy, our delivery guy,

said the bars down town are up 30%. Which means you’re talkin’, moanin’ distributors

off 30%... so far this year that’s about a…between 5 and 10 million dollars drop on sales.

I mean it’s… you don’t drive through downtown Monday through Thursday and it’s

dead. I mean, you used to have to wait to drive down High St.”

Jordan – “Yea exactly, nowhere to park, either, too.”

Mark – “Yea. I mean it’s, I think it’s drugs personally. I really do. I think heroine’s blew

up in this town, 30’s, xanny bars…and it’s well, I can spend my money on that, or I can

go to the bar. They don’t have the money like they used to.”

Jordan – “Yea…that makes sense.”

Mark – “That, and West—I don’t care what your degree is, but West Virginia is 3 years

behind the rest of the country. So when the rest of the country was in a recession, we

were still doin’ good. So we have like the trickledown effect of money. From students,

parents… so now everyone else is coming out of the recession, but we’re still sittin’ in it.

So we got about another 2 years.”

Jordan – “So with these seasonal things, and like football games and everything, and how

you said you’re like school-operated basically, do you guys just like plan for that? Or do

you have like a strategy for that?”

Mark – “Yea, I think, I mean…”

Jordan – “Like hours change and stuff like that”

Mark – “Well our hours change in the summer. We close early in the summer. And then

we shorten our hours in the summer. But I mean it’s…It’s all about planning, for the

weekend. Like, football season’s goin’ good, you’re rollin pounds in here. Ya know? Ya

know you’re gonna sell. Football season’s doin’ bad, you just go on a walk. I mean,

everything’s driven on football pretty much in this town.”

Jordan – “That makes sense. So what do you think makes you guys stand out? Like

compared to other places.”

Mark – “Honestly, our parking.”

Jordan – *laughs, “Yea the parking is nice.”

Mark – “Alright, you can’t you open a store like this, like if we tore down and

redesigned, you have to build to the road, and put your parking in the rear. That’s just the

city code of Morgantown. University Avenue you can’t have parking places up front

anymore. Which I don’t understand, but it helps us.”

Jordan – “What about weaknesses? Anything you guys think you can improve on?”

Mark – “Personally, I think we should do more hot food. I’ve always said it, I mean we

have a full kitchen downstairs that we don’t even use.”

Jordan – “Oh wow, I didn’t even know there was a downstairs.”

Mark – “Oh yea like we have meat slicers, and we have… this used to be a grocery store,

first it was a gas station. We been here since ’48. Like you see those pillars right there?”

Jordan – “Yea.”

Mark – “Those used to be gas pumps on the other side, then they expanded and did a

whole grocery store. So we had like a deli slicer, chicken driers… I think if we do fried

chicken we’d make a killing. Just do drum sticks.”

Jordan – “So uh, I mean I figure it’s pretty obvious, but who’s the biggest competitor?”

Mark – “Sheetz. You know.”

Jordan – “Before them who was it? Anybody? Did you guys have like somebody on the

street?”

Mark – “Oh no, we were it. It was us and Merrison’s. But Merrison’s had their area, we

had ours. And then, we owned the other store on top of the hill. We used to own an

express store, but we sold it, and that guy just went outta business.”

Jordan – “Sheetz has like so much food that it’s hard to compete with that.”

Mark – “But its… it’s not even like…. They carry the same groceries as us. Students are

lazy now. They don’t wanna cook. Like, when I graduated from here, we had barbecues

for everything. Like, ya know, we had, ya know, house parties where you had food, you

had tailgates where you had food. Now people’s idea of tailgates is they go to

McDonald’s and get one hundred dollar double cheeseburgers and take ‘em to a camper.

They don’t put effort into it.”

Jordan – “Yep. So if you could do anything to change the Superette, make it a better

place, just ignoring any financial, just do anything to it…what do you think? What would

you do?”

Mark – “I would cut back on groceries, and do more hot food. I mean it’s all changing

with the time, people don’t like to cook anymore. I mean I’d do hot food. But the

problem with that is, people go with what they see on TV. And I’ll give you a perfect

example of that. We carried fountain drinks for 10 years, at least. They never sold. We

used to do hot dogs, and they sold when we made them for people. But when we

switched that to pizza and had them make their own hot dogs, hot dogs stopped selling.

People don’t wanna make their food. That’s why Sheetz works, cause they make food.

Their fountain drinks sell because they have the commercials for it. You’re a generation

of what you see on TV. You can see it all over. Like, with restaurants, restaurants that do

good here are Olive Garden, Roadhouse, etc…”

Jordan – “Yea, and they may not be the best restaurants like you know, Black Bear.”

Mark – “No, yea I know. You don’t see as many people there.”

Jordan – “So what do you guys do for like marketing/advertising here?”

Mark – “Well, we go with the neighborhood store method. Everyone knows. We know

95% of our customers. And it works well. I mean it does. But I mean it….”

Jordan – “You think it could be better?”

Mark – “It is what it is… you got more people cuttin’ into the pie now is what it is. It’s

not even just Sheetz. I mean you got CVS, I mean everyone they just see what the

business was 10 years ago…people buy land and they start…”

Jordan – “They take a share of the market.”

Mark – “Yea, and you guys, you’re gonna have 8 more grocery places underneath this

new parking garage, so honestly I don’t feel like, and I don’t know why he’s putting

those there cause he doesn’t even have the other ones rented. Like he has 3 of the 7

rented underneath UPlace and he’s building 8 more. Why not just… allocate it to

parking?”

Jordan – “Yea.”

Mark – “Supposedly, they’re struggling. Not Sheetz. The building. Like the only have

50% of the apartments rented. Which, on an 80 million dollar building…not great.”

Jordan – “Not great, yea. Well man, thank you a lot. I appreciate it. Take her easy.”

Mark – “Yea, no problem, have a good one.”

Analysis & Findings:

1. The interview began with some situational questions about Mark and the Sunnyside

Superette. As we got to conversing, I started throwing questions into appropriate topics of

discussion. These questions were designed to anticipate certain answers that involved the

goals. Whenever Mark gave me an answer to one of these questions, I took that excerpt

into consideration for my analysis.

2. I selected the excerpts from the interview due to their informational use and relativity to

the interview goals.

3. From the selected context, my findings emerged by an approach similar to Hermeneutics.

I simply listened to what Mark had to say, made interpretations based on the manner in

which he responded, and used the content of my notes. By providing a comfortable

conversation setting, I got Mark to cooperate smoothly, and was able to draw conclusions

from our interview.

4. The interview goals were met due to the way I designed the questions, the method I used

to analyze the responses, and the quality of the responses given by Mark.

Illustrative Examples:

a. Mark – “We’re a 9 month business, like, we do all our business during the school

year, but we make the majority of our money during football season. Basketball

season doesn’t pull the people like football does.”

b. Mark – “Yea, uh, that’s not really... the first thing that hurt us on business was life

sciences building. Cause traffic flow for walking needs to be they walk out of

summit, turn right, and come down University, and they built life sciences, they

put in the double doors. Now they walk outta Summit, go down Grant, cut

through the double doors. Go all the way down.”

c. Mark – “And it’s not even really that, it’s… these students don’t party like they

used to, not even close. I mean, you’re talkin’, we used to run our store like a bar

where you bring up 2 people, let ‘em out, let 2 people in. Ya know? We would

have 300 people in here. Easily. But, it’s… it’s all over town. I mean like, my

Budweiser guy, our delivery guy, said the bars down town are up 30%. Which

means you’re talkin’, moanin’ distributors off 30%... so far this year that’s about

a…between 5 and 10 million dollars drop on sales. I mean it’s… you don’t drive

through downtown Monday through Thursday and it’s dead. I mean, you used to

have to wait to drive down High St.”

d. Mark – “Well our hours change in the summer. We close early in the summer.

And then we shorten our hours in the summer. But I mean it’s…It’s all about

planning, for the weekend. Like, football season’s goin’ good, you’re rollin

pounds in here. Ya know? Ya know you’re gonna sell. Football season’s doin’

bad, you just go on a walk. I mean, everything’s driven on football pretty much in

this town.”

e. Mark – “Honestly, our parking.”

Jordan – *laughs, “Yea the parking is nice.”

Mark – “Alright, you can’t you open a store like this, like if we tore down and

redesigned, you have to build to the road, and put your parking in the rear. That’s

just the city code of Morgantown. University Avenue you can’t have parking

places up front anymore. Which I don’t understand, but it helps us.”

f. Jordan – “What about weaknesses? Anything you guys think you can improve

on?”

Mark – “Personally, I think we should do more hot food. I’ve always said it, I

mean we have a full kitchen downstairs that we don’t even use.”

g. Jordan – “So what do you guys do for like marketing/advertising here?”

Mark – “Well, we go with the neighborhood store method. Everyone knows. We

know 95% of our customers. And it works well. I mean it does. But I mean it….”

Jordan – “You think it could be better?”

Mark – “It is what it is… you got more people cuttin’ into the pie now is what it

is. It’s not even just Sheetz. I mean you got CVS, I mean everyone they just see

what the business was 10 years ago…people buy land and they start…”

Jordan – “They take a share of the market.”

Reflection of the Interview Process:

This interview prepared me for future interviews I might conduct as a marketer or

researcher. Finding out about a market through the eyes of a manager was new to me, and the

analysis was probably the best part. The main challenge I experienced was keeping the manager

on track, as he somewhat rambled about a few things. Trying to get him back to the topic at hand

while not cutting him off or making him feel his words were unimportant was something I hadn’t

faced before.

From my personal selling class last semester, I learned a method for asking questions that

elicits a more comfortable setting for an interview, and I believe it proved effective in this

exercise. I began with situational questions, moved to topics, introduced the questions, and

followed up with another question after his initial responses. Any time I felt I needed more

information, I somewhat probed the manager by nodding my head or appearing to understand

what he was trying to explain. I found that I could get most of what I needed from him by just

having a normal conversation, and by maintaining a positive, comfortable environment.

Lastly, my original questions were designed to reach the goals I wanted for the interview.

I asked him almost every question, however in different vernacular compared to the way they are

typed. By asking the situational questions, I got somewhat of a background on Mark and his

knowledge of the store, and was able to realize the last questions on my list would be difficult for

him to answer. Overall, I thought the interview was highly beneficial to my business experience

as a whole, and I will feel at ease the next time I prepare to interview someone.