With heady revenue predictions for retail media north of $100 billion, it’s not surprising to see a surge of retailers opening advertising shops in attempts to capture share. But we’re still in the early days, with behemoths scooping up most of the brand spend. Here are six relationship and revenue-building strategies for retailers to consider.
The challenge being laid today is to understand that in-store fulfillment is a workaround, not a scalable solution, for retailers penetrating further into ecommerce. If your physical shoppers have a bad experience because of technological processes you’ve enabled, you have failed them in the overall customer journey.
Walmart is the most popular destination for e-grocery ordering, according to a new survey by Chicory, cited by 36% of respondents, followed by Amazon at 23%, and Instacart a distant third at 10%. Target was cited by just under 10% of respondents, followed by Kroger at 7%, Albertson’s/Safeway (3%), Stop & Shop (2%) and Shipt (1%).
Dark stores, even as a temporarily approach, can help offset the cost of underperforming stores and the expense of freight and logistics, especially in more densely populated areas. It also takes online fulfillment out of store operations, allowing retailers to concentrate on customer service and minimizing inventory confusion.
Ocado, the UK grocery concern that has struck deals with grocers around the world to use its robotic fulfillment center technology, is being sued by AutoStore for intellectual property theft – with AutoStore in turn being investigated by Ocado for patent infringement. AutoStore filed the lawsuits in London and New York.
Amazon has finally opened the doors of its hybrid Amazon Fresh store in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles, a futuristic blend of digital and physical challenging traditional grocers that had been put on hold this spring due to the COVID-19 crisis. Customers can breeze through checkout and navigate the store via Alexa.
Kroger plans to launch a marketplace this fall through a partnership with French platform provider Mirakl, adding 50,000 items from sellers initially to its assortment, including toys and household goods in addition to specialty foods, international foods and natural and organic items. The marketplace is an expansion of Kroger Ship.
A handful of grocery retailers have flipped some locations into so-called dark stores to handle the crush of online orders, but it remains to be seen how widespread the practice will become or how much the trend will stick after the coronavirus threat dies down. Retailers include Amazon/Whole Foods, Kroger, Giant Eagle and Stop & Shop.
