ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, “Building Your Own Box to Beat Your Competition—Part 1,” NACS hosts Jeff Lenard and Carolyn Schnare discuss the ideas in author Steve Miller’s book, Uncopyable: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition.

“Disruption is everywhere right now, and I would certainly think it’s a very big thing in the convenience store industry because technology has made it extremely easy for new competitors to pop up all over the place,” said Miller, who founded The Adventure LLC.  “What that means is that technology has essentially commoditized a lot of things to make it easier for people to compete.”

Miller put forth the idea that it’s no longer good enough to be better than the competition—you need to rise above the competition. “Every industry and every market has their own box … and inside that box, everybody’s is studying each other,” he said, adding a quote from his book: “Competition doesn’t breed innovation—competition breeds conformity.”

He also emphasized that while subscription services are popular, it’s more important for retailers to make their customers feel important like “a rock star. … The ultimate goal of all [memberships, clubs or loyalty programs…] is to create what I call the attached versus loyal customer. You want an attached customer [because that person will stick with you in the long term].”

And for more from Steve Miller and his ideas on competition, attend the education session, “The Evolving Competition Within Convenience” at the NACS Show this year in Las Vegas.  Register today!

Each week a new Convenience Matters episode is released. The podcast can be downloaded on iTunes, Google Play and other podcast apps, and at www.conveniencematters.com. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners more than 50,000 times in more than 80 countries.