This Week in Retail: Winds of changing consumer habits

Let’s first look at online and more specifically food delivery platforms. One of the features of “being online” that is irreversibly hardwired in the consumer mind, is the abundance and accessibility of choice – information, products, opinions, content, and yes, food. Having somany alternatives makes the barriers to switch quite low, while it also increases the expectations for more convenient delivery at meal occasions and forces competitors to constantly evolve their offers to stay afloat.  So, how have they been faring?

Deliveroo is expanding its on-demand grocery delivery by signing up smaller independent stores across London to its delivery platform. This undoubtedly aims to address the shoppers’ rising expectations to get the products they want ‘pronto!’  Deliveroo has taken the approach to cast its partnership net wide to satisfy these demands. Uber Eats, on the other hand, is trying a slightly different approach whereby it is  introducing new features to its service by launching a new pick up option to its customers in the United States. It might seem a bit counterintuitive for a delivery platform to allow itsclients the option to pick up the food they order. However, it highlights a deeper platform / ecosystem vision that underpins the Uber Eats’ business model, which it seems does not solely rely on its core delivery offer. It is fair to say that the organisation is  harnessing the network effects of its platform by bringing together businesses and customers,  allowing them to easily connect to each other and finally to figure out what the most convenient way to do business is. The flexibility of platform models such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats allows them to more easily adapt to the changing customer demands by evolving their core offers through the open ecosystem of partners and services they have aggregated. It is a model and a way of thinking that is being actively explored by more and more traditional retailers as well, so definitely watch this space in the near future!

A recurring topic in This Week in Retail has been sustainability. Few would argue that it is a trend heavily influencing customer preferences in terms of where they shop, what they buy and what their consumption habits are. As such, retailers need to adapt not only their core products and services, but also any supplementary and experiential features that go with them. Morrisons have definitely sensed  which direction the wind of change is blowing and hasstarted building the largest supermarket network of rapid chargers. The new charging stations are said to fill up the customers’ EVs with juice enough for up to 100 miles for about only 20-30mins. Not only does this make it more convenient for the sustainability conscious customer, but it can perhaps squeeze in a few additional precious minutes to spend in the stores and put a few additional items in their basket, making it commercially viable for the business as well…

Author

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Stoyan Petrov

Senior Consultant,  Customer Engagement