The market is shifting as consumers adapt to challenging financial conditions according to Measuring the Online Grocery Market: eGrocery Share in the U.S., a report released in early September 2023. Flight-to-value behaviors are visible in how households are adjusting the way they buy groceries online. One sign is that Walmart has steadily increased its market share, surpassing the entire Supermarket channel for the past three quarters. Another sign is that Pickup’s share dominance over Delivery continues to grow.
Heads up - The average overall base
of monthly users in the U.S. has increased by nearly 3
percentage points while the online penetration of Supermarkets declined
by 2 points in 2022 compared to
2021 levels. This is just one of many insights in a new report that delves deep into eGrocery shopping patterns at the four major
grocery retail formats – Supermarkets, Walmart, Target, and Hard Discount.
Selling innovative solutions to grocers isn’t a slam dunk. Here are 3 keys to selling into the grocery market, based on our 25+ years of working directly with grocery retailers and 10+ years of helping solution providers introduce their offerings to grocery organizations.
Competing online is a challenging endeavor that requires knowing the landscape and understanding which paths to pursue and how. For brick-and-mortar grocery retailers, mapping the plan is even trickier since there isn’t a well-worn path to follow. The monthly State of the U.S. eGrocery Market Report from Brick Meets Click is specifically designed to help brick-and-mortar grocers by providing objective research and that broader view. Here are four reasons why you need it.
The recent Bloomberg LP piece Instacart CEO Courts Investors, Skeptical Grocers Ahead of IPO illustrates the crossroads that both Instacart and many grocery retailers find themselves at today. The stakes are high for both parties - here's why.
For 10 years, Brick Meets Click has been connecting today’s grocery business with tomorrow’s needs. To celebrate this 10th anniversary, here is a "heads-up" list 10 trends that will be important for grocery retailers and brands for 2022.
Based on his experiences as a customer, retailer, and now egrocery
platform provider, Homesome's Founder & CEO Rahul Chabukswar has an interesting
POV on what it will take for the industry to fulfill its potential with
online grocery. Homesome secured $6.7 million in funding in late 2020 and is expanding as it positions itself as the Shopify of
the grocery industry. (5 min. read)
Inflation has been lurking in the background for several months, but the projections for the coming year should get every retailer's attention because they need to choose how to navigate this next period. The good news is there are new tools to help retailers deal with product cost increases, and now is the time to decide which of these approaches make sense for them to follow.
To survive, traditional grocers need to speed up their adoption of digital transformation, but what does that exactly mean? Jim Dippold, co-founder of Customer Management Partners, describes what it looks like across the organization and explains the crucial key to succeeding at it.
While pickup is now the dominant form of online grocery fulfillment,
delivery is also growing fast. The latest Brick Meets Click research
shows that delivery increased by nearly 300% on a sales basis over the
period of the pandemic (Aug 2019 vs June 2021). The recent proliferation of innovative delivery services raises the question of where grocery delivery is headed. We break down the major areas of cost that must be in balance to yield the low-cost solution.
Traditional grocers are feeling competition from Amazon and beginning to see the need for digitally transforming the business. Despite the progress that’s been made, the question remains: “What does digital transformation look like?” China is one place to look for answers, so we talked to Robin Michel, who has spent several years consulting there after a long career as a senior US supermarket executive. Here, she addresses six questions that give insight into what US grocers can learn.
Amazon Fresh is a formidable competitor trying to make inroads in the physical grocery space – so having a wide range of players and perspectives evaluate its strengths and weaknesses is useful. Here's a view through the eyes of an experienced hands-on grocery executive, one who knows the skills, knowledge, and equipment required to deliver effective merchandising and consistently high-quality fresh product.
We see two pandemic-driven shifts are reshaping how
supermarkets will need to compete in 2021 and beyond: keeping up with the
demands of online grocery shoppers, and the strong loyalty that satisfied
customers appear to have to their current eGrocery platform. Continued sales
growth, combined with high satisfaction ratings from a changing customer mix, underscores the importance of
focusing on more effective strategies to drive profitability, satisfaction, and
customer acquisition.
COVID-19 was a catalyst for swift and significant changes in the U.S. grocery industry; however, it has also shaped a new set of realities that will impact how companies can grow their online business more effectively going forward. Grocery retailers need to focus on attracting more online customers, driving up spending, and improving the customer experience to frame up their opportunities as they develop and refine their future strategies.
Versions of the phrase “better than a trip to the store” are popping up in lots of online grocery descriptions these days – but we first heard it from Barnaby Montgomery, who built a successful online grocery retail business in Los Angeles around the concept. We thought it was a good time to touch base with Barnaby to get a deeper understanding of what that concept means and what it takes to execute the idea six months into the Pandemic.
The real threat behind the new Amazon Fresh stores is that they are built to outlast (aka survive) other grocery retailers vs. directly competing with them. Looking at the operating model in a broader strategic context reveals the format strives to provide an improved shopping experience while achieving a low break-even sales volume. This means that it can operate profitably in intensely competitive markets – and shows why discounting the model as too conventional is not a good plan.
What do Amazon's new store locations tell us about what it's trying to achieve in grocery? We asked Lou Scudere, a grocery real estate expert with extensive experience in the industry including 25+ years at K-VA-T Foods, to look at the similarities between these sites and tell us what he thinks. Check out what Lou has to say, and see why studying Amazon's moves are so important.
Shopper behavior is being impacted by the COVID crisis and the changes point toward the “new normal/reality” – but what should grocery retailers be doing to keep up with their customers? After reviewing a new report from the Retail Feedback Group that shows where and how supermarket shoppers have changed, we offer these emerging areas of key shopper needs along with ideas on how operators can effectively respond. (4 min read)
Amazon has continued to refine and strengthen its three-prong strategy to win in grocery despite the COVID-19 pandemic –albeit rather quietly. Since Amazon's execution of this strategy is looming on the horizon (as early as the second half of 2020), we think it is vital to offer: 1) a high-level description of what we see happening, and 2) the changes food retailers need to make in this inevitably more challenging and competitive environment.
Having tracked the growth of US online grocery since 2011, we’re thinking about the long-term impact COVID-19 will have on adoption, the operational difficulties caused by the recent surge in online orders – and especially what retailers can do to support first-time users of the service, many of whom may be older.
The new Amazon Go Grocery store provides another piece of the puzzle that will eventually reveal the big picture of Amazon’s role in grocery. One clue to where it may fit is that Amazon says it’s a separate store format – not just a bigger version of Amazon Go. That means it’s designed and located to serve a different set of customer need states (i.e., shopping occasions).
Customer Management is powerful because it provides a scalable process
that allows both grocery retailers and brands to convert customer
transaction data into value that actually produces new growth. Learn how this works from two
experts who describe the process – and who challenge trading partners to think about how they can achieve improved business results by leveraging targeted, customer-focused collaborative opportunities.
In this Q&A, Jim Dippold and Jean-Marc Sallenave, co-authors of the new book Customer Management: How Retailers Must Change to Survive and Succeed explain what it is, how it improves business results, and how grocers capture those benefits. The surprise? Customer Management is within reach of most organizations (including your own). 6 min read
Tyson Foods' Eric Le Blanc, Director of Marketing for Deli, has been on a mission to connect with consumers in meaningful ways that go beyond transactional marketing tactics. By addressing consumers' essential concerns, Eric and his team discovered how they can sell more prepared foods and groceries. Find out how he develops and applies these insights in this Q&A. (5 min read)
There is much debate about how grocery retailing will evolve over the next 5-10 years – but it’s safe to say that leveraging automation will be one of the ways brick and mortar supermarkets evolve their models to remain viable and profitable. Here are five forecasts about automation’s impact on grocery that can help all of us –
retailers, product suppliers, and tech providers – begin to imagine and ultimately
create the future.
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