Stop & Shop is trying to win back customers. Here’s their strategy.

NORTH PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island Stop & Shop stores have lowered everyday prices on some 3,500 items in each store, new company president Roger Wheeler, who has been in the job about a week, told The Providence Journal in an exclusive interview Monday.

The pricing change is the splashiest of a three-prong strategy to win back customers who have found the Massachusetts-based chain has stressed their grocery budgets more than area competitors.

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“We don’t want to be known for always having the highest price,” Wheeler said. “Here we are today lowering [prices] on thousands of items across the entire store. Because we want you to think of us in a different way than you might have thought of us for the last however many years.”

The chain also has done away with the 10-cent fee it charged customers for paper shopping bags in Rhode Island.

“I decided actually my first day that I got here to eliminate the bag fees that we were charging,” he said. “It’s causing a lot of kind of angst, on top of everything else, getting charged for a bag.”

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