Given the personal nature of food and consumer goods preferences, the grocery sector is perfectly poised to introduce highly personalized experiences that stimulate better and more intelligent upsell, conversion and loyalty. Yet, digital grocery shopping presents many unique challenges for grocers that make it far more complex for grocers to transform the digital experience, than for their retail cousins. As a result of the nuanced challenges, digital grocers will never operate as ‘simply’ as most other ecommerce areas.
There are two contrasting trends emerging in retail – fast and frictionless verses experiential and time well spent.
Recent technological advancements in retail have focused on speeding up the customer experience, making it as efficient as possible, especially around the checkout; as we’ve seen in the Amazon Go stores, where it’s been eliminated completely. In contrast, the growing experience economy has placed greater emphasis on the notion of ‘slow retail’ – slowing down the shopping experience by creating even more ways for shoppers to engage with brands in a way that goes beyond transactions to memorable experiences. Think REI and their in-store rock face or Sweaty Betty and their in-store fitness classes.
Data Privacy and Consent Implications for Retail
With the laws tightening around opt-in consent from consumers impacting on marketable databases for retailers, it’s hard not to be pessimistic about the effect on the retail industry’s bottom line.
Retailers have not only seen their marketable databases dwindle, but they potentially lose valuable insights and data intelligence on their shoppers’ behaviour and preferences, essential to continually improve and optimize their efforts.
- While 75% of UK respondents are unfamiliar with AI, 43% value means like AI to personalise their shopping experiences
- 80% of UK respondents want retailers to disclose if they are using AI to market products and outline how they are using the technology
- Almost 1/3 of UK consumers are willing to share more personal data for an improved shopping experience
John Lewis is one of just a handful of retailers innovating and introducing new technology in-store to improve the customer experience.
In 2017, John Lewis launched their Partner App as a key part of their Digital Strategy for their shops. The aim of the Partner App was to enable their partners to better serve customers in-store through instant stock checking, ordering items, browsing the entire JL assortment, doing product comparisons and sharing products by email.
Strategic Alliance Provides a Best-of-Breed Alternative Joint Solution for Dynamic Content Personalization
19 June 2018, London, UK and New York, New York – Amplience, the global leader in cloud delivered Rich Media, Content Management and Asset Management Software-as-a-Service, and RichRelevance, the global leader in Experience Personalization, today launched a joint solution called the Open eXperience Cloud (OXC) that gives brands the power to deliver richly personalized 1:1 shopping experiences.
It is typically thought that shoppers mainly browse and research on their mobile devices, with purchases taking place via other channels. Many retailers therefore accept their mobile conversion rates will be lower than those on desktop websites.
Bubbleroom isn’t any ordinary retailer and back in 2016 they had the vision to target a mobile conversion ratio that rivalled its website.
Grocery shopping is a regular part of life. It is not just a frequent purchase but a high proportion of household spend. Even though it lags behind the rest of retail, online shopping for groceries is on the rise (12% in the UK, and between 4% and 8% in the US) with over half of consumers in the UK now shopping online with other countries not far behind.