FMI, Nielsen Expand Efforts for Digitally Engaged Food Shopper Study

Food Marketing Institute and Nielsen are amping up their efforts for this year's Digitally Engaged Food Shopper study, which will now include an omichannel "road map" and a broadened roundup of advisory partners. 

The study, which has been released annually for the past three years, has made predictions such as consumer spend on online grocery shopping could reach $100 billion (inclusive of food and beverage and CPG products, only) and that in as few as five to seven years, 70% of consumers will be doing at least some grocery shopping online.

Mark Baum, chief collaboration officer of FMI, said the efforts are "effectively reducing the learning curve" and helping members understand current technology to create their own solutions. He described the initiative as a "choose your own adventure" within the context of a company’s digital self-assessment and how our members want to design and execute their digital strategies in this fast-paced environment.”

"These companies, working closely together and with us, represent a natural evolution of the Nielsen and FMI Digitally Engaged Food Shopper study and bring insights and a collective resource to help the food industry move forward effectively and efficiently on implementing omnichannel success," he said.

The 2019 Digitally Engaged Food Shopper initiative will offer a new set of action items for retailers with new perspectives from AT Kearney, NPD, Precima, Eversight, Mi9 Retail and RSi. The tools and recommended steps forward will be broken down into seven operational imperatives and converted into business applications.

The seven focus areas will include:

Align Organizational Structures for Omnichannel Success: Integrate digital offerings in parallel with brick-and-mortar operations.

Partner company: AT Kearney. “The new silo-busting, outcome-oriented ways of working to consistently succeed, the company must focus analytics on outcomes while giving more functions real-time access to customer and operational insights.”  

Address Discrepant Datasets: Scrub master data files for discrepancies; strength in data and accuracy is a critical component to successfully support online sale efforts.

Partner company: Nielsen. “This is about data management underpinning every customer-facing decision and all the downstream process in the shopper end-to-end experience, including back office supply, fulfillment and delivery, with an ideal endgame of managing much more in the real-time activation process and not at the historical perspective.”

Integrate Forecasts to Increase Operational Efficiencies: Integrate online and offline forecasting so the right amount of inventory is available to meet orders through all channels.

Partner company: RSi. “Managing and maximizing on-shelf availability in this new omnichannel world will become mission critical for all the major players in the retail ecosystem.”

Optimize Shopper Insights: Bring retailer and manufacturer shopper information together into a single, comprehensive view of customer insights.

Partner companies: Precima and NPD. “From the shopper’s perspective, a retailer who employs coherent shopper insights will present a more consistently dependable experience and an appealing value story.”

 Improve Marketing and Promotions: Optimize the management of omnichannel marketing and promotions.

Partner company: Nielsen. “While annual planning and strategic investments are still key to pursuing long-term growth, today’s media and consumption environment demand agility and adaptability.”

Merge Digital and In-Store Shelf Capabilities: Manage and unify the physical shelf and its digital counterpart to create a valuable, seamless shopping experience in this post-omnichannel world.

Partner company: Eversight. “The digital in-store shelf is rapidly becoming both dynamic and personal, unlocking agility in pricing and promotions powered by real-time experimentation.

Amplify platform landscape and options: Specialty solutions are vital enhancements to planning and e-commerce and offer an improved shopper experience.

Partner company: Mi9 Retail. “Although there are a variety of enterprise-class and other solutions available, grocers need to pay special attention and focus on those that enable retailers to deliver contextual e-commerce experiences, amplify a retailer’s business agility and are built to evolve.”