Ball's Food Stores Selects KSS for Retail Price Optimization.

Kansas City Leading Chain to Leverage KSS PriceStrat For Price Modeling and Optimization

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- KSS, a global leader in retail price optimization solutions, announced today that Ball's Food Stores, operator of 30 Hen House, and Ball's Price Chopper grocery stores, has selected the KSS PriceStrat solution for retail price modeling and optimization. KSS currently has price optimization customers in 12 countries with more than 22,000 retail sites.

Ball's Food Stores was founded in 1923 by Sidney and Mollie Ball and currently operates stores under the Ball's, Price Chopper and Hen House banners. Ball's will use KSS PriceStrat to optimize regular and promotional pricing to ensure that it provides strong value to its customers. KSS PriceStrat provides the ability to accurately model and evaluate the effects of regular and promotional pricing, real-time, On-Demand, thanks to PriceStrat's self-learning models and on-site installation.

"KSS provides us with the ability to model and understand the impact of our pricing and promotional decisions, before we implement them," said Mike Beal, vice president and chief financial officer at Ball's Food Stores. "Because KSS PriceStrat is a fast, intuitive solution, our merchandisers and pricing analysts will be able to use it in their daily work flow to empower their pricing and promotional decisions."

"Ball's Food Stores is a great operator and knows how to leverage technology to provide a superior customer shopping experience," said Lance Jacobs, chief executive office of KSS' retail division. "KSS' PriceStrat is designed to be used on the front lines by merchants and pricing analysts, and will enable Ball's to incorporate price modeling and optimization into their daily lives. We are privileged to be working with Ball's Food Stores and look forward to collaborating with them in producing tremendous benefits for their organization."

KSS PriceStrat provides regular and promotional price modeling and optimization, On-Demand, as part of an integrated solution. Leveraging more than 13 years of data modeling experience, KSS provides optimization solutions to retailers around the world for store and fuel center pricing.

About Ball's

Ball's Food Stores -- a member of Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc., -- operates 30 supermarkets in the Kansas City area under the Hen House Markets and Ball's Price Chopper banners. Hen House Markets are upscale, service-oriented establishments, while Price Chopper is the company's price-impact supermarket format. Ball's Food Stores is a leader in the Kansas City market and is currently taking steps to increase efficiencies and compete more effectively in their marketplace. Founded in 1923 by Sidney and Mollie Ball, the grocery company is run by their son, Chairman Fred Ball, and grandson, President David Ball.

About KSS

KSS is the leading supplier of comprehensive pricing intelligence, optimization and execution solutions to the convenience retail, grocery, chain drug, general retail and petroleum industries. The company helps retailers manage more than $70 billion in annual revenue from more than 22,000 outlets. Retailers use KSS software to model, forecast and optimize the effects of pricing and promotional decisions. PriceStrat and other KSS software are available as an on-site, fully integrated system. For more information, visit www.kssg.com. For media inquiries, contact Roy Miller at [phone] x235, or at [e-mail].

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