👉 Background: Woolworths is the largest supermarket in Australia with 37% market share. But a few weeks ago, 1,500 Woolworths staff went on strike, leading to 17 days of industrial action at four distribution centres in Victoria and NSW.

👉 What happened: This strike led to empty supermarket shelves and also affected supply at Endeavour Group liquor stores like Dan Murphy’s. Over the weekend, Woolworths finally came to an agreement with their warehouse staff, which included removing surveillance software that is constantly monitoring workers' speed.

👉 What else: But Woolworths has warned that this 17-day hiatus cost them $140 million in lost revenue, and it’s expected to hurt their expected earnings by $60 million. But the big winner out of all of this is... Coles!

What's the key learning?

💡Forcing customers to change their regular habits is like gifting an own goal to your competitor. Many Aussies are loyal to their supermarket, in fact, 62% of shoppers who shopped at Woolies in Month 1 were still shopping with Woolies 6 months later for their main shop.

💡But price wasn’t the biggest influence, it was mainly the convenience of shopping nearby as well as unconscious habit of sticking to what you know. Woolies has disrupted the habits of their loyal customers which might not only prompt them to change now, but adjust their habits into the future.

💡In fact, the unstocked shelves at Woolies is expected to increase Coles’ earnings by 2.3% this financial year, according to Barrenjoey. So Woolies is hoping to get its customers come back to stocked shelves soon.