Asda launches ‘mums army’
Executive board of mothers to be recruited
Asda aims to spotlight its family-friendly credentials by recruiting a ‘mums army’ to advise the business.
The Wal-Mart owned supermarket chain, currently featuring celebrity mum Sharon Osborne in its advertising, is to create a second executive board made up exclusively of mothers.
This will comprise eight mothers who will serve for one year and will be asked to give Asda buyers and executive board members face-to-face feedback on a quarterly checklist of products and services.
Asda hopes it will include a single-parent, a father, young mum, grandparent, working mother, step-parent and older mum Each will be buddied-up with one of the eight existing Asda executive board members.
An Ipsos poll of parents, commissioned by Asda, has given it a snapshot of modern parenthood and is a starting point for Asda to create initiatives to help mums and dads throughout the year. The survey found that less than 20 per cent of parents plan financially for having children. In response Asda has launched a Child Trust Fund to help parents build a nest-egg for their children to cash in when they turn 18.
The top cause of stress for mums, at 43 per cent and dads, 45 per cent is finances. Borrowing is commonplace, with 34 per cent of mums relying on loans for major purchases. The majority of parents, 68 per cent of mums and 67 per cent of dads, say that having children has put a financial burden on them and three quarters of mums say they are very cautious about how they spend their money.
Finding time as well as money was a struggle for many parents. Only 35 per cent of dads were happy with the amount of time they spend with their kids. 77 per cent of mums agreed that they often found it difficult to fit everything they needed to do into one day and 68 per cent felt they didn’t have enough time for themselves. Trading a social for a family life was commonplace too – 58 per cent of mums said that their social life had suffered since having children.
Children appear to bring families closer together. The survey found that 82 per cent of grandparents see their grandchildren at least once a week and 65 per cent of grandparents agreed that their grandchildren had brought them closer to their own children. Parents also agreed that there were many rewards to raising children with the top three most often named being: watching them grow (31 per cent); seeing them happy (25 per cent) and being a family (24 per cent).
[img r]asdainstore2.jpg[/img]Asda’s trading and marketing director and chair of the Mums’ Board, Angela Spindler, said: “The focus on mums makes perfect sense. Mums have to perform and amazing juggling act every day of the week. They probably face the most demands and are the most time-pressured and value conscious customers we have. If we get it right for them we reckon we’ll get it right for everyone.”
