Grocery is now an online business

This episode explores the impactful rise of online grocery shopping, highlighting growth projections and key strategies for grocers to succeed in an increasingly digital marketplace. We discuss the importance of mobile applications, channel fluidity, and enhanced customer experiences in driving this trend forward. 
• Exploration of the growth trajectory of online grocery sales 
• Emphasis on the necessity of mobile applications for purchasing 
• Discussion of channel fluidity between online and in-store shopping 
• Importance of back-office technology in inventory management 
• Features like recipe integration to improve customer experience 
• Insights into the future of grocery retail in a digital age

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Well, hello everyone. You know one of the things I've been various platforms, such as a retailer's app, their website, their social media platforms, or third-party delivery marketplaces delivery marketplaces. It's interesting because this shift indicates the fact that a category that was a slow starter in online sales is now one of the most critical online categories in online segments that there is. The report goes on to talk about the fact that the growth of online groceries is not slowing down and that online grocery sales will reach $388 billion by 2027, up from $276 billion this past year. Now, although food currently represents about 10% share of online sales, it still trails behind categories like baby care and health and beauty, and didn't grow quite as fast as some of those categories, but at 18% growth during a 52-week period that ended in September. Clearly, the trend towards online grocery is not a fad, but here to stay.

Speaker 1: 1:46

Now that makes me think about some of the strategies that grocers really need to embrace to capitalize upon this. Obviously, their mobile applications. The ability to make research and buying decisions on mobile is absolutely critical to serving a customer well. Being what I call channel fluid, in other words, allowing a customer to bounce back and forth between online and in-store shopping, is absolutely of critical importance Investments in e-commerce capabilities, investing in things like the technology back office functions that allow inventory updates and different services and, obviously, different information about individual products, and enhancing their shopping platform to allow customers not just to place orders for things that they know that they need, but a lot of grocers also have added recipe capabilities to where, if you find a great recipe online, you simply press one button and all the ingredients end up in your shopping cart A really great customer experience. That's one of the things I've been thinking about recently. I'm Scott Benedict.