Blog
Filtered by author: Bill BishopOur thought leadership offers practical guidance about today’s ever-evolving online/offline grocery marketplace.
Chinese tech's move into food retailing: What should we learn from Alibaba, Tencent and JD?
It would be a mistake not to take a good look at China for signs of developments that will shape the future of US grocery retailing. Here we focus on China’s big three players – Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com – because they have the scale to break new ground in Chinese food retailing, and to set the stage in other markets as well. We also asked BMC Black Belts Ron Lunde and Steve Lauder to contribute their unique POVs. Add yours to the conversation!
What will new-built grocery stores look like in 2023?
We often hear retail leaders ask “What will the grocery stores of the future look like?” While no one can predict the future with certainty, it’s possible to develop a good idea of what it will look like if you read the trends. That’s how we created this vision of the grocery stores that will be opening just five years from now in 2023.
What is retail's destination? Alibaba has some good answers
The Kroger/Alibaba talks are all the buzz right now, but what does it
mean to you? If you work in food distribution or retailing, it means you
need to be actively working to build (or at minimum refresh) your
organization’s vision for the future of food retailing. Alibaba’s
approach offers some valuable insights to those who are developing their
game plan. Here’s why, and how those insights can help.
Improving retail profitability with A.I. tech: Spotlight on Daisy Intelligence Corp.
Using data in new ways will be crucial to optimizing promotion and assortment decisions to increase profits, and Daisy Intelligence Corp. is on a mission to bring the power of artificial intelligence analytics to these challenges for grocery retailers of all sizes (and others). Learn how A.I. harnesses the value of your data in practical ways.
2017 grocery retail refresh: Why Kroger, Lidl, and Walmart will have a bigger impact than you think
2017 was an action-packed year for changes in grocery retail. Amazon
got much of the air time, but we wanted to call out three other events will likely have far
more profound impacts on the future of food retailing: Lidl's entry energizes Aldi, Kroger’s embrace of data and science, and Walmart’s vision for storeless retailing. Don’t underestimate how these three
changes will accelerate the challenges to old habits and paths to
growth. 
Amazon gets physical: What grocery can expect in 2018
While Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods grabbed most of the attention this year, two quieter but even more significant changes took place. Both underscore just how important getting physical is to Amazon’s future growth plans. As 2017 closes, it’s a good time for those in the grocery business to step back and look at how Whole Foods fits into the bigger Amazon picture – and at what we should expect in the future so effective competitive responses can be executed.
How Amazon stacks up against supermarkets and a message to grocery C-suites
Amazon withdrew the AmazonFresh service from nine US markets recently, but it’s far from giving up on the race to win more online grocery sales (as its Whole Foods acquisition shows). In fact, this contraction means that it is regrouping resources, and it’s crucial that supermarkets understand where they stand compared to Amazon because the competition for shoppers will only increase.
Growth signals for future US online grocery spending & more
Brick Meets Click’s latest research finds that more consumers are shopping online for groceries – for 2017, 38% of households did some online grocery shopping in the past 12 months, up from 34% in 2015. Although it won’t eclipse in-store shopping for the majority of US shoppers anytime soon, online grocery’s penetration and share of wallet are growing steadily.
Digging into why Aldi & Lidl are so successful and what this means for the future
It’s time for everyone in the
grocery retail business to ask: How do
hard discounters make money? The answer sheds light on hard discounters’
strengths, so that competitors and suppliers get the insights they need to
develop responses to this growing threat - this includes making
significant changes in the way they work together to be able to neutralize this
powerful new way of doing business.
Making online grocery "better than a trip to the store" & other lessons from Yummy.com
Barnaby Montgomery, the co-founder and CEO of Yummy.com is a leader in reinventing the grocery store and a long-time friend of Brick Meets Click. We caught up with him to get an idea of what he's been working on recently in terms of reinventing the grocery store and what he thinks are the changes worth focusing on in the marketplace. (This interview transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)
What will the grocery business look like in 5 years?
Recent moves by Lidl, Aldi and Amazon are sending tremors through the food distribution/retailing business that will result in major changes over the next 5+ years, and the question on the minds of many is: What will the grocery business look like in 5 years? Here’s what we see happening.
How to survive a price war: Harness the power of localization, attributes, and automation
Price wars are never fun, but the best offense is a good defense. There are many ways to survive if you’re willing to try some different approaches for staying ahead of the competition. These include tailoring comp shops, identifying the most important product attributes, and leveraging automation. The goal is to keep pricing focused on both retaining the current business while attracting new business even as the market continues to change.
What do you think will Amazon look like in 5 years?
Is Amazon’s growth realistic? Its stock has increased 173% since the start of 2015, and some investors project that it will reach half a trillion dollars in sales within the next decade – driven by eCommerce, AWS, and various other services, including digital assistant Alexa. We decided to do a series of thought experiments on what Amazon will look like in five years.
The Aldi transformation continues: Investments in the shopping experience
Transformation is a big topic in the industry these days, but what does it look like, exactly? I’d argue that Aldi is a great example – and that now is a particularly good time to check on how their business reinvention is coming along. My colleague Bill Bolton and I estimate top line sales will increase from $14.6 billion in 2016 to $24.9 billion by the end of 2021.
Why retailers and suppliers really need to map the customer experience: Q&A with Marise Kumar
Few people know as much about the customer experience as Marise Kumar does – both how to map it, and why it’s so important for retailers to bake this into their approach. “Great retailers manage their customer experience, they don’t just let it happen,” Marise says. Today, when shoppers have so many choices that each purchase must be earned, this discipline is even more crucial for both retailers and suppliers.
Measured/loyalty marketing and the digital age: Q&A with Brian Woolf
As the digital era changes the very structure of how retail happens, it's clearly time for retailers and brands to rethink their approach to loyalty and personalization. I recently interviewed Brian Woolf, one of the thought leaders in this area, to get his perspective on measured/loyalty marketing, on where progress is being made, and where the opportunities for improved approaches like "valued customers" exist.
The future is here: 5 questions food industry players need to answer in 2017
We are celebrating our 5th
anniversary of Brick Meets Click, and wow, what an interesting 5 years it’s
been! Early on we set out to study how technology was changing the future of shopping,
and now that the future is here, it’s clear that digital’s impact extends far
beyond that scope. Here's what we see – and the 5 key questions everyone should be asking themselves.
Taking personalization of food to a whole new level: Q&A with Vivanda's Jerry Wolfe
As part of our ongoing mission to highlight innovators who are creating disruption and new efficiencies, we wanted to spend some time with Jerry Wolfe, CEO and founder of Vivanda. Jerry aspires to serve as a positive catalyst for the wave of digital forces to create better service to the consumer and sustainable industry growth. If you don’t know what a FlavorPrint is yet, you’ll want to keep reading.
The power of collaboration, category management & digital merchandising
In the race to reinvent grocery shopping, supermarket retailers, wholesalers, CPG manufacturers, and other suppliers will need to strengthen their collaboration in order to fend off new options that are competing for share of consumer mind and wallet. CatMan 2.0™ can serve as the foundation for this collaboration, and it will work even better if it includes digital merchandising – neither food retailers nor CPG brands can do this as well alone as they can do it together.
Why digital merchandising matters more than ever: Q&A with Steve Lauder
Steve Lauder doesn’t talk about the path to purchase – instead, he talks about moments in which personal context and the available choices come together to influence purchase decisions. If you’re not present in that moment, you don’t even have a chance to “win” the sale. That’s why he believes every retailer – including grocers – needs to build this insight into the way they execute digital merchandising.
How you can handicap the race to reinvent grocery shopping
A “race to reinvent grocery shopping” is underway as digital innovations in the marketplace compete for consumers’attention, and the outcome depends on how consumers react and respond. Retailers and suppliers are like observers at the racetrack, foot on the rail, racing form in hand, trying to figure out how to handicap the race – here’s a tool that will help.
Penguin Fresh writes new rules for online grocery: Q&A with Egil Moller Nielsen
As part of our on-going mission to highlight innovators who are
thinking differently about grocery retail, we wanted to spend some time
with Egil Moller Nielsen, who clearly brings an outsider’s perspective
to the
food retailing business. The Penguin Fresh supply
chain he designed is unique in many ways. It leverages existing networks
instead
of building new ones, and it breaks many of the grocery industry “rules”
that were
established in an earlier era.
The real threat online grocery Basket Bandits pose to supermarkets
The real
threat from Basket Bandits isn’t today’s lost sale, it’s how they’re
changing
grocery shopping. Basket Bandit sites are siphoning off supermarket
sales in small bits, but more profoundly, they are changing the way
consumers organize and execute the very process of grocery shopping
habits. This is the change that will significantly and negatively impact
traditional supermarket retailers.
Driving loyalty: What retailers are doing wrong and how to fix it
The radical ideas about loyalty that David Ciancio developed while he was helping Kroger build its best-in-class approach can help retailers do two things better that are critical for success and growth: translate loyalty into a focus on what’s happening inside the store, and increase the sales-driving effectiveness of category management and shopper marketing.
FMI 2016 Recap: Time to turn up the volume on 3 key concepts
Last month’s FMI Show in Chicago was full of buzz, but after the dust settled we were more struck by what we didn’t hear hear and see – especially in three key areas that will have a lot of influence on the future of food retailing. Here are quick takes on all three.
