Total faces pressure from supermarkets

Total, the world’s fourth largest oil company, has learned to live under increasing pressure from supermarkets in its core markets and is expanding its services and Bonjour convenience store format in order to compete.

Those were the key messages delivered by Antoine Tournand, Total’s marketing and development, shop and food services manager, at the Insight/NACS Global Convenience Benchmarks event in Dublin.

While Total is the number one petrol retailer in Western European and Africa and operates a total network of 16,500 sites, there has been a significant decline in the number of stations in France in the last 20 years and hypermarkets and supermarkets now account for 58% of French sales.

The forecourt sector faces increased pressure in France too with plans afoot to partially ban the sale of alcohol from French petrol stations.

Tournand said that while the company is mostly known by the Total brand, it also operates the Elf brand in France. It offers quality fuel at a supermarket price geared to driving volume.

Total also operates AS24; a professional network for trucks, through a network of 500 unmanned stations in Europe.

On the Total branded sites, Total has developed a ‘Eurotrafic’ card targeted at fleet users. It operates in 16 countries with 3.4m cardholders. The company has also introduced a premium fuel, Total Excellium, available on the Total branded network only. According to Tournand, Total promises the product will help motorists save money, rather than insisting on performance, and it is sold with a money-back guarantee.

Total operates 1,500 Bonjour convenience stores. It is a flexible format, which is adapted to each individual market, and includes partnerships with retailers such as Casino and Spar. Car wash facilities are also a key element of the format, said Tournand.

Tournand said Total was developing fuels to meet higher environmental standards and clustering its shops based upon different customer groups e.g. pit stop, commuter, workplace, c-store and oasis.

The company has also launched a Total credit card in France, offering rebates of between 3-9%.