Now you might think that gas stations make a bunch of money, and you would be wrong. Drilling and refining oil generates buckets of money, but pumping gas is a low margin business. The real retail gas station money is inside convenience stores.
Customers pump low margin gas, but also buy cigarettes, bread, soft drinks, aspirin, toothpaste and candy bars at a healthy mark-up. Heck, you can serve free coffee from these convenience stores and still make money. But here’s the problem, men make most convenience store purchases, and we all know that females are the ones will the real cash. So how do you attract women to shop convenience stores? Well, Marathon Oil believes they know the answer. In a busy Marathon convenience store north of Columbus, Ohio, the chain is booting out a Subway sandwich station in the convenience store and replacing it with a US Post Office. (The office will be staffed by friendly convenience store clerks rather than postal workers.) There are 44 other contract US Post Offices in Central and Southern Ohio, but this is the first one inside a gas station.
Marketing Blurb thinks this is a great idea, and we will send our wife and girlfriend to mail a package, purchase stamps, buy gas, and deodorant. She can even keep the free coffee.
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