Photo: SpartanNash/Family Fare
Can SpartanNash use BOPIS to take personalization to the next level?
Grocers have been pinging shoppers’ smartphones with personalized offers for some time, but at this point, the practice is more hyped than common. The expansion of BOPIS, however, may offer a way for grocers to get their personalization efforts rolling.
That’s the hope of Dave Staples, president and COO at SpartanNash, which is introducing a new BOPIS platform that includes a component tied to targeted promotions. Beyond focusing on the BOPIS in-store experience, the platform integrates each of SpartanNash’s banner websites and apps, as well as recipe offerings, to capitalize on the personalization level accessible online.
“As we rollout this click-and-collect, it takes our whole sort of e-commerce and personalization efforts to a next level,” said Mr. Staples on the grocer’s recent fourth-quarter conference call. “I think it gets pretty exciting the things we can do, from tailoring the ad when you get onto a website, to really targeted promotion, to understanding how we segment our customers better, to make sure we have the right offers to the right segments. As opposed to clustering stores, we’ll begin to cluster customers.”
SpartanNash will introduce the new platform at a Family Fare location in the greater Grand Rapids area. If successful, the program will reach an additional 25 stores by the year’s end. The grocer already has nine locations using different versions of click-and-collect.
Mr. Staples said SpartanNash continues to make progress on its personalization initiatives led by its Yes! loyalty program. He added, “We continue to really be excited about where we see it taking us and the kind of information and data we can use from share of wallet and how we approach the consumer to get them to expand that with us in categories they are not shopping as fully as possible. As well as just really beginning to understand the likes and dislikes of individual customers and being able to tailor offerings to those likes and dislikes.”
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Do you see BOPIS being instrumental in helping grocers ramp up personalization efforts? What can retailers do to extend the personalization possible online to brick & mortar?
Poll
BrainTrust
Charles Dimov
Vice President of Marketing, OrderDynamics
Ben Ball
Senior Vice President, Dechert-Hampe (retired)
BOPIS can be more desirable in grocery than in other retail segments. You order your groceries (some are perishable) from wherever you are, you drive into the supermarket pickup area on your way home, you pick up your order and you make sure everything stays fresh as soon as you get home. In order for you to do this, the grocer has to know who you are and will know what you buy, when you buy it and what you don’t buy that it would like you to buy. While it is not the only way to gain a path to personalization, it is certainly an effective way to enhance the personalization efforts. Grocers can accomplish similar objectives with the use of loyalty programs with those customers who don’t shop online.
BOPIS can definitely help with personalization. Any good order management system will have integrations with email, social platforms, simple text systems, etc. A simple personalization step is to let the customer choose how they want to get notified of an order being ready, for example. With a centralized system or record, you can also start doing some cool things like observing what day of the week a particular shopper uses BOPIS, or likes to do their pickups. Use this in combination with loyalty offers to incent additional purchases, upsell or highlight potential purchases just before a customer’s favorite ordering time.
There are a world of opportunities for SpartanNash.
BOPIS provides an excellent opportunity to drive personalization efforts with loyal customers. The grocery segment hasn’t done the best job of integrating digital experiences and technology into their stores compared to other retail segments (I write about this in my article here where I gave the industry a report card on its digital transformation), but BOPIS is one area where they seem to excel over others. Just look at the adoption of this experience in the UK to see the potential impact to sales and loyalty.
For most customers the grocery shopping experience is fairly mundane and simple and most consumers don’t change brands easily. Services like BOPIS coupled with personalization that is more than just discount offers may change that. Grocery retailers need to become “all things food” to their customers — ranging from recipes, cooking tips and new product awareness to healthy eating habits and fun lifestyle anecdotes to help them become a trusted partner to their customers. Perceived ease and convenience are important to customers for increasing loyalty and BOPIS plus personalization can do this, especially if it builds trust. As retailers learn more insights about their customers from their purchases in this process, the relationship has the potential to become deeper and more meaningful if executed properly. The more creative brands will be the ones to succeed in this segment.
Click-and-collect (BOPIS) has been readily accepted and proven successful for the QSR and fast-casual dining sectors and I believe it will be very successful in the grocery and prepared food business as well. The biggest challenge is for grocers to become more technically proficient and opened-minded to introducing and integrating technology into their workflows. Grocers, as well as many retailers, need to expedite their experimentation or Amazon Go will literally and figuratively eat their lunch! (include breakfast and dinner as well.)
I got booed out of the gym (or off the discussion board) the last time I said this — but I’m gonna say it again. If the SpartanNash definition of BOPIS is literally “pick up in store” this will only be marginally successful. The biggest hassle shoppers are trying to avoid with online ordering and collection is going into the store in the first place. If SpartanNash solves that with curbside delivery of the order to the shopper’s car — preferably waiting for them when their mobile app pings the store that they are 5 minutes away, fresh from the refrigerated/frozen holding area where it was placed after picking — then they have something.
I would agree that BOPIS presents a lot of opportunities when it comes to personalising the experience. For one, it gives retailers two chances, online when customers order and in-store when they pick up. Which also means an interesting set of data from when they typically order to when they typically pick up, how large their orders are etc. This can all be helpful in personalising interactions. Does someone typically do one large weekly shop and therefore might appreciate offers, content, new ideas around staple items? Or do they shop little and often, buying dinner items for example, where they might be interested in trying new products and recipes?
BOPIS is gaining popularity among users and is well on its way to becoming instrumental in personalization efforts. It saves times for users and allows retailers to target and personalize ads for them. It also provides data for the retail to analyze purchasing trends and optimize their pricing and assortment like Amazon. A small roll out on SpartanNash’s part is smart to test the waters and see how well the platform performs. I look forwards to hearing about the results later down the line.
There’s plenty more on the horizon. I know of another grocer who’s about to amp up multichannel efforts this year. Customers will expect it, and just a few years from now we’ll be wondering what the fuss was about.