Grocery retail in transition: The opportunity to refocus on customers’ needs

The grocery retail industry is in the midst of a transformation. The world around us is changing and it’s causing people to rethink their shopping habits. As people shift their focus away from traditional grocery stores to other methods of food preparation, including meal kit delivery, individual cooking, and home delivery services, grocers are forced to rethink their offer.

The answer? Refocus on customers’ needs. Grocery stores can no longer just sell groceries; they need to be places where communities come together, where people spend time with their family, and where you know you’ll always find what you need when it comes to food.

What can grocery retailers learn from user data?

Grocers are trying to figure out how they can transition into a new era of grocery retailing. But what should they do? One strategy is to look at customer data. Grocers have the opportunity to learn about their customers’ needs and come up with ways to address them. Grocers should also consider what types of services their customers are looking for. Basically, there are three conceivable data sources that can provide insights to grocery retailers:

a) external structured data
e.g. external ratings like Google or kununu; consumer research; localization data; traffic frequency; product scores like nutri score

b) internal data
e.g. online metrics; bon data; shopping cart size; loyalty programs; in-store traffic; revenue trends; product range insights; physical sensors measurements

c) full consent user data
e.g. shopping histories from for Amazon, Gorillas etc.; social media behavior; social media interests; external loyalty card data

Full consent data, as the name suggests, cannot be used without the customer’s consent. We provide the necessary platform for this.

All sources, especially when combined, offer crucial insights: Customers’ needs become clear. For instance, based on the insights gained, the risk of churn can be reduced or specific services can be developed that improve the customer’s quality of life.

Focus on customers’ needs

The key to make the transition into the new era of grocery retailing is by focusing on your customers’ needs. Grocery stores need to be seen as a place where people come together, not just a place for food shopping. To do that, there are many things you can do to create a community-oriented environment in your store. For example, offer cooking demonstrations or cooking classes for kids and adults alike. These will help people learn how to prepare their own meals while still fueling their curiosity about the foods they’re consuming.

With all these examples, one thing is for sure: User data helps to understand what customers’ needs are in concrete terms and thus enables strategically important decisions to be made.

Making customers happy is the best loyalty program

Customers will always leave if they feel like you don’t care about them. There is no loyalty program that can make up for the quality of your service and your relationship with customers. If you want to keep customers happy, it starts with ensuring that they get what they want when they come in. That doesn’t mean that you should give away everything for free; it means that the customer should feel like they get more bang for their buck when they shop at your store.

By measuring customer satisfaction using a wide variety of data sources, such as full consent user data from third-party sources, available external online sources, and internal customer data, a basis is created for managing strategic initiatives.

At seneq.io, we help companies to improve their customers’ quality-of-life by giving them better insights into the needs of their customers. With a data-driven approach, we allow companies to make smarter decisions, improve their churn management and lead their businesses in a more efficient direction. Get in touch with us to learn how we can support your business today or request our pitch deck to get involved in our latest venture, where we are building a quality-of-life based data trading platform to unlock full consent user data: info@seneq.io