It comes after rats beset a Dunedin Countdown, a mouse tainting the deli of a Christchurch store, and another scurrying the aisles of an Auckland Pak n’ Save.
Last month, the Otago Daily Times published an article detailing an infestation of rats at Dunedin South Countdown, featuring a photo of a rat in the supermarket’s deli section that had been supplied to the paper by an employee.
Just weeks later, a customer of Christchurch’s Eastgate Countdown posted a video to the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu showing a mouse on top of a salad.
Both incidents prompted investigations by New Zealand Food Safety, as well as parent company Woolworths.
This week, a West Auckland supermarket goer was left “disgusted” after spotting a mouse running through the aisles on Tuesday and posting a video to social media.
Wellington School of Business and Government Associate Professor of Marketing Dr Daniel Laufer, a researcher in crisis management, said the stories may have led to the assumption the industry was in crisis.
“It’s a perception that does not necessarily reflect reality,” he said.
Competitors of Countdown would need to be ready to pre-emptively respond, as they were at risk of crisis contagion, he said.
“If this is isolated to just certain players in the industry, then it’s not an industry crisis, but a company that has different systems which is being viewed as guilty by association because they belong to the same industry,” Laufer said.
“When people see images of rats or mice [in supermarkets] on TV, or videos, or in the newspaper, that’s very, very damaging, and in terms of customers and potential customers.
“If they have options, they’re much more likely to say, ‘I have a Countdown nearby, but there’s a New World not far away, maybe it’s better to go there’. So that’s a that’s the big risk for Countdown.”
He said in the fallout of such incidents, it was important for the supermarket giants to convince the public they have made a major change in the way they operate in order to prevent this from happening again.
While both incidents in the Christchurch and Dunedin stores would be a hit to Countdown’s image, it may potentially be mitigated by the company’s pre-planned name change to Woolworths later this year.
Laufer said the fact an employee of Dunedin’s Countdown South leaked the photo to The Otago Daily Times was a signal employees did not feel comfortable sharing information internally.
For companies to prevent such scenarios from happening, it was important to create an open organisational culture where employees felt able to come to bring sensitive issues to management.
“Whistleblower programmes are a way to kind of deal with that, where if employees feel they’re not being heard, if there’s a mechanism by which they can reach out, then that helps prevent information leaking out to the media,” he said.
“You can see why this sort of thing can really hurt a company in terms of its communications during a crisis - in this case, Countdown communicating that they’re looking into the problem and they’re taking actions in order to prevent it from happening in the future, when you have other voices [employees] saying contradictory things.”
First Union organiser Angus Wilson said staff of the Dunedin Countdown South store were being well looked after despite the store’s closure, and had been given the options to clean the store, work at the Andersons Bay Countdown, or take paid leave if wanted.
“The company is actually helping out their staff quite well, their since things have gone public has been very good,” he said.
He said it was likely management were trying to track down the employee who leaked the image of rats in the deli to media, to figure out why they didn’t feel comfortable talking to management.
“I don’t think that person will put their hands up anytime soon,” he said.
He said he didn’t think the highly public nature of the story was affecting morale, and rather staff were relieved the situation was getting the attention it deserved.
“From what I’ve been told, they’ve been raising the alarm for a while and they hadn’t really been listened to, they’ve been a bit frustrated,” Wilson said.
“The situation is improving... I think the actions the company and [the pest control company] have been taking have had an effect. They’ll hopefully have the store back open as possibly the cleanest Countdown in the entire country.”
By Ben Tomsett
