Food Forum: Getting ahead of the digital transformation

Retailers that learn to leverage accurate digital content put themselves on the winning side of this inevitable shift. By Sue Sentell Grocery retailing has been thought to be the least impacted by mobile and digital shopping, but that is rapidly changing. According to Brick Meets Click, about 3% of grocery shopping happens online. The Food Marketing Institute expects that to hit 11% by 2025. However, more than 10% of customers are already buying some groceries online, and pure play retailers like Amazon Fresh and Vitacost.com—a healthy living site bought by Kroger in August 2014—are winning that business. Younger consumers lead the shift. According to Bill Bishop, chief architect of Brick Meets Click, “A lot of new relationships are being built right now” between consumers and online grocery providers. Savvy “traditional” grocers are taking in everything that has been learned in the short history of online and mobile shopping to stem this tide and enrich their digital engagement with consumers. One important finding is that the path to purchase is really a funnel, with digital channels such as email, apps, messaging, display ads, search, social and web all influencing consumer behavior. According to a 2014 survey by Kurt Salmon Associates, 67% of consumers have searched for grocery product information online. Emerging in-store technologies have picked up the thread, using beacons and in-store digital displays. Another trend is click-and-collect services such as Harris Teeter’s Express Lane. Kurt Salmon found that 54% of consumers would be likely to use buy online, pick up in-store services, with 33% saying it would lead them to purchase more. The second big lesson is that customer relationships are local relationships. According to a January 2014 report by Accenture and Forrester Research, 73% of consumers are likely or very likely to visit a local store if the retailer provides in-store product availability information online, compared with 36% of customers who would visit a store if no inventory information were available online. The Kurt Salmon survey found that 39% of consumers would purchase more from a grocer who offered online searchable store inventory. That calls up the third essential lesson: It is all about relationships. Consumers are mindful shoppers, particularly Millennials. It is no longer enough to be in stock with the right items at the right price: Consumers expect retailers to understand their products and their customers on a deeper level. They want health and wellness advice and nutrition recommendations from dieticians. They want recipe ideas, shopping lists and product reviews. They want more information about products, whether it is related to sustainability, allergies, natural/organic or just overall benefits. Retailers that satisfy these needs are set up for success to win consumers’ allegiance. There is a common denominator here, and it is this: All of these trends rely on digital product content, and that content must be accurate. The product online has to match what is on the shelf—the same package design, nutrition info, directions, dimensions and images, etc. Nearly 40% of shoppers would not buy a product if they did not trust the accuracy of the digital information, according to GS1. With an average grocery retailer offering 43,000 SKUs, making sure content stays accurate on every product can be overwhelming. To manage digital product content successfully, retailers must collect it from a multitude of CPG suppliers and/or a product content provider; make sure it is complete, accurate, up-to-date and in formats that work for every touch point; and then make it available to the many internal departments and external vendors that need it—a single version of the truth. Accurate digital content is so critical to the way consumers now shop that smart retailers are turning to content partners that specialize in creating, maintaining and distributing accurate digital product images and information. Sue Sentell is president and CEO of Gladson. She can be reached at [email protected].