Amazon Prime’s one-hour delivery is now available in UK cities Greater London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bristol. Sainsbury’s is introducing same-day delivery trials. And Tesco.com now has 57% of it’s traffic coming from mobiles. FMCG brands have an opportunity to align their brands to instant gratification needs of consumers.
Research online, purchase offline (ROPO) is a concept that’s been with us for a while now, and used to be how make marketers thought about their product category. But with FMCG online sales growing, and next day and same day deliveries on the rise, we need to look at what products consumers what and how we should market them.
Convenience Beats Range Online
Half of shoppers (50%) say that online shopping is getting more convenient in the Live & Breathe State Of Retail 2016 survey. When asked, If you had to shop online or on the High Street for the rest of your life, which would you choose?, 55% of people chose online.
Online shopping covers off the hygiene factors really well. Convenience is the No.1 rated improvement in the channel, followed closely by more choice/greater selection (47%) and more value (45%).
Scores for what’s getting worse about online shopping are the lowest in the survey, much lower than scores for the High Street or shopping centres. A huge 68% selected none of the options for areas that needed improving. The No.1 answer in this area was that 16% of people would like even more choice/greater selection.
Sainsbury’s say that it’s same-day delivery trial is driven by an increase in next-day grocery orders. People want their shop delivered asap. And this means that consumers want convenience from FMCG brands too. One cheese retailer tells me that its best-selling product selling through Amazon Prime is grated cheese. It seems a good indicator that when people are getting their food delivered in the next two hours, they want food prep and cooking to be as easy as possible.
Appetite For One-Hour Delivery Driven By Same-Day Delivery Success
The Live & Breathe survey asked which aspects of delivery besides Click & Collect would influence shoppers to order online more. Sixty-nine per cent say they would shop more online if free delivery was included. Forty-nine per cent of shoppers said that same-day delivery would make them more likely to increase their number of shops.
Surprisingly, 43% said that one-hour delivery would make them buy more online, despite only a small number of people having tried the service through Amazon Prime in London at the time of the survey.
Click & Collect Beats Mobile And Tablets For Tech Innovation
According to Live & Breathe’s State of Retail survey, seven times more people say online shopping is getting better because of more Click & Collect (28%) than say it is getting worse because of poor or no Click & Collect (4%).
When asked, Which one technology changed the way you shopped in 2015?, Click & Collect was the top answer (19%), beating mobile phones, tablets and smart watches. For those who have not already fully integrated Click & Collect into their supply chain and offer to shoppers, now is the time to make that a priority.
What Should FMCG Marketers Do Next?
1. An Updated Shopper Journey
If you’ve not fully mapped out your ideal and actual shopper journeys for a multi-channel world, it’s time to produce an update model that includes ROPO (research online, purchase offline), Click & Collect and home delivery.
2. Review Your Media Spend
Does your media spend reflect your percentage of online sales? Are you driving the right levels of digital media to grocery e-commerce site and supporting your e-commerce listings with ads? Are you supporting a ROPO journey?
3. Review Your Creative
Do your creative briefs take into account the growth of online and home delivery sales? Are you asking your creative time to produce assets that focus on convenience?
Covering the three steps above will position your brands as those best adapted to this rapidly changing multi-channel world.
Adapted from Surviving Digital Disruption by Viv Craske – available from amazon here
