e-grocery rating 2023 Portugal
Customer Experience Studio “Pulse” is announcing the completion of the second wave of the e-grocery services research in the Portuguese market — e-grocery rating 2023 Portugal, which is the benchmark of functionality in web stores, and revealing the best online supermarkets.
This article is a demo report of the research, presenting focused on the Product card functionality. To have a consultation and buy the full version, please contact us.
2022 e-grocery rating Portugal outlook
To make yourself familiar with the rating and research details of first wave, please pay attention to the e-grocery rating 2022 Portugal article.
The results of the first wave of the research revealed the most enhanced feature sets in the online grocery purchasing process that were provided by online supermarkets Continente, El Corte Inglés and Auchan.
The reality of 2023
To have an overview of the current state of the e-grocery market it makes sense to take into consideration annual reports from European e-commerce experts as well as understand the situation on the Portuguese local market. There are some inputs:
- Europe E-Commerce Report 2023: Portugal still has a comparable low level of both Internet usage and E-shoppers rates across Europe.
Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are the leaders with Internet usage rate of 100%. For the share of the population who bought online — the UK is leading the list with 95%, Netherlands and Norway follow with 90%.
2. EuroCommecre experts: because of the inflation and cost-of-living crisis, consumers changed their strategy and they are making more rational choices. New behavior that can be described as “eat less, shower less” and choosing private labeled products to save money, influences the FMCG players directly.
3.Same time there is an encouraging forecast presented in the annual report The State of Grocery Retail 2023 Europe by McKinsey — “e-grocery will reach profitability within the next two to three years and at least double by 2030.”
4. Reality in Portugal:
- Lidl, Aldi, Mercadona haven’t launched their online supermarkets so far,
- E.Leclerc closed the operations of its online store in Portugal at the beginning of 2023,
- Auchan bought Spanish Dia’s chain of Mini Preço stores in Portugal (Mini Preço online supermarket is still in operation).
Research concept and methodology
The research concept and methodology are the same as the previous year.
- E-grocery rating 2023 Portugal is an annual syndicated research of digital customer experience in Portuguese online supermarkets.
- Studio has developed its benchmark functionality framework and studies the set of 700 features in every online supermarket. Following the Customer Journey — Information for the customer about the online supermarket, Registration, Catalog, Product page, Cart, Order placement including Payment, Notifications, Personal area/Profile.
Current article plays the role of demo report research with focus on Product card Customer Journey part. - In the article by the link you can find more information regarding:
- Objectives,
- Methodology,
- Who would be interested in buying a detailed research report?
- Why buy the research report?
2023 participants
We shaped the participants list by few following steps:
- Checked the TOP-250 list of biggest retailers in the world that is published every year by Deloitte, and chose players from the Portuguese e-grocery market.
2. According to the methodology’s requirements, e-grocery players were separated by a few parameters, so we onboarded to the research list all the retailers that
- sell groceries,
- have a chain of physical stores in Portugal,
- have an online store in operation (web version).
4. Apolonia and Froiz were also included in the participants list the following players in the Portuguese market.
So for the e-grocery research 2023 Portugal we have the following list of participants:
5. Later, during the research period, Pingo Doce (Mercadão) was excluded from the original participants’ list based on the actual performance state of the service — experts of the Studio could not perform the customer scenarios using online supermarket with appropriate quality and service’s feedback time.
2023 focus — Product card, why?
Based on the 2022 research, we saw no e-grocery player in the Portuguese market, even among the leaders of the rating, allocates a big amount of effort to create, update and keep the product information full, relevant and up to date. It’s visible on the graphs that the Product card (or Product page) is the category with the actual not significant representation of the features of TOP-3 online supermarkets — Continente Online, El Corte Inglés Supermercado and Auchan.
Therefore the idea for the 2023 wave’s focus of the research is to verify if there are improvements for Product card as it’s a very substantial area of online store, and publish the result as a demo version of e-grocery research report 2023.
Why the fulfillment, features and presentation of the Product card are so important? There are some inputs about role of the Product card:
- Essential for the process of buying food online: all actions that customers do in physical store, they should be able to do online, or at least — close, of course we can not smell the fruit and open the product as in the case of checking the eggs (for now!). However, the role of the e-grocery retailer is to create the simulation of the food purchasing process, provide the maximum details and features possible with current technologies and limitations, to convert potential customer into the real buyer.
- Defining the making of a purchase decision: to be able to make a choice, customers need to have exhaustive information about the products. To beat the uncertainty caused by having the border between physical customer presence and virtuality of the product representation, e-grocery companies can help customers gain confidence about their choice — except for the full product info, features such as comparing similar products, showing wise offers and suggestions, can support customers in the process of taking decision.
- Shaping the trust and willingness to cooperate for a long period: consistency of service and constant support make it possible for customers to think about online supermarket as proper supplier, or even as partner for one of the parts of their lives.
Product card features
The full version of the e-grocery research report consists of the results of all 700 features studied in all the supermarkets of the research participants. Product card feature set is a part of the 700 features benchmark framework.
Product card features were grouped by 4 categories.
General is presented by main features like description, photo and other details of the product.
Product rating contains the features that allow customer to
- see the current rating of the products, based on the customers’ reviews,
- read the reviews,
- rate the product and leave the review, accompanied with product content.
Recommendations is a block, that usually being presented at the bottom of the Product card, to offer for the customer the other products by some logic.
Compare feature set is focused on the possibility for the customers to compare the products by few characteristics.
For the rating we only count features that are presented in online supermarkets constantly. Features, partly implemented or not available for all the products consistently, not adding any score.
e-grocery rating 2023 result
For the purpose of this article as demo report of the research, CX Studio “Pulse” presents the rating based on the Product card feature set. To order the full version of the research report, feel free to contact us.
Rating
El Corte Inglés is the leader of the rating with 36 features implemented for the Product card in its online supermarket. Auchan has second place with 33 features in place. Apolonia and SPAR share the third place with a set of 30 features available. The rest of the participants showed fewer features in place for the Product card representation.
Research analytics
100 features of the Product card were studied during the research conducting, there are some detailed information accompanied by the graphs.
Product card’s type
The majority of the online supermarkets have a proper page for the presentation of the content about the product. Only Apolonia presents the Product card in the way of an additional quick view window.
Photo and video content in the Product card
- The option to zoom the product photo is available in 6 online supermarkets, except of Intermarché and SPAR.
- Only Apolonia has consistently more than 1 photo of the product and photos are taken from different perspectives (Auchan and Mini Preço have it partly only, not for all products).
- No online supermarket presents photos of dishes that customers can cook with the product as well as present the recipes.
- Continente is the only retailer with the option to watch the video related to the product, on the Product card, but this feature is implemented partly.
Information about the product
The situation with the provision of the product detailed information is quite frustrating — so we see that price, price per kg and product quantity/ volume presented by the all of research participants.
No retailer provides detailed information about the product as a Description of the product, Information about allergens constantly, as well as indicator of nutrition score, that can help customers easily understand if they should buy the product, based on their preference, without reading the nutrition declaration table.
Nutrition info, Ingredients, Terms of storage and Origin country are presented partly, by one of the online supermarkets.
Zero IVA visual mark
This year it’s relevant to reflect the new measures on the market from the Portuguese government and bring the visual presentation for the products with no IVA, so customers can see easily and make a choice.
Half of the e-grocery retailers implemented icons with “0 IVA” on the Product cards in their online stores.
Save to Favorites
Save to Favorites or Shopping list features serve to give customers more freedom and confidence during their online groceries shopping — they can save products and don’t need to be worried about searching for them again using the search field or looking through catalog categories to find them. Instead of spending extra time, customers can just click on the Favorites icon, or find a menu point in the profile to access all the products they previously saved.
Auchan, Continente and Froiz have a “Save to the Favorites” feature. Apolonia, El Corte Ingles, El Corte Inglés, Intermarché and SPAR have the feature to save products to the “List of favorites”/”Shopping list”. So all the online supermarkets, except Mini Preço, have features to save the products.
Total amount
Calculation of the total amount of the chosen product qty/vol. are not available in any online store. From a technical perspective of view, it’s a minor logic rule that can be implemented on the front-end part of the online supermarket IT architecture.
Unfortunately, no retailer brought it to the online supermarket. So if the customer is looking at the bread Product card, for example, and sees a price like 1,65 EUR, if he/she chooses 2 units, he/she still will see the price for one. The good world’s practice, the quantity of product chosen will be immediately reflected to the Product card — the price for 1 product will be still available, in addition will be calculated and presented the total amount.
Share the Product card
4 out of 8 research participants have the feature to share Product card via email, social media integration presented by 3 of them, and only Auchan have the feature to share Product card by messenger.
Product rating and reviews
Half of the e-grocery market players have the rating of the product, presented on the Product card. They also have the option to leave feedback as well as to read the reviews of other online supermarket customers.
This feature would bring more information about the product to the customers and help to decide to buy. Some details such as the intensity of the product flavor, the package, the freshness, some specific characteristics and other information as well as photos of the product, User Generated Content (UGC) would be useful to
- be shared within the customer base to help customers to buy what they really like and not be disappointed,
- the retailers’ acknowledgement as they are the platforms between the producer and customers (so they can make decisions based on it).
Unfortunately, the feature is presented, but in comparison with other countries’ online supermarkets, in the Portuguese market this feature is not
- supported by retailers, there is no involvement of customers in this initiative,
- adopted by Portuguese customers, maybe they don’t see the value of it at the current moment based on the level of it’s development.
Product recommendations and offers
Product recommendations and offers in the Product card is the additional block with list of the products that online supermarket recommends to check, to buy, or it suggest the products that can complement the current product.
This feature can help
- customers to make better choice and don’t forget to buy something,
- retailers — to sell more.
More than half of the research participants have this feature.
The research participants present 1–10 products that based on their logic, can be relevant. They use the name for this feature as
- “recommended products”,
- “similar products”,
- “recently viewed products”,
- “you may also like”,
- “with this product other customers buy”,
- “with this product other customers also checked these products”, etc.
Compare products
Feature to compare products presented to the customers only by one of the retailers — SPAR. Possibility of having option to compare the current product with other products is relevant for the customers in the case when
- products are very similar, or Product card has lack of information,
- they don’t have confidence regarding their choice and the table with the product’s characteristics and their visual difference, would be beneficial.
Resume
- Performance
All online supermarkets that were studied, have performance issues that add frustration to the experience of the online customers and can be the cause of not proceeding to the purchase completion.
For example, customers could be facing at the moment:
- Product card page is opening very slowly,
- When the Product card already opened, but a photo of the product is still in the process of appearing, etc.
As mentioned above, Pingo Doce (Mercadão) was excluded from the research participants’ list based on the actual performance state of the service.
2. No significant improvement of Product card content
Since September 2022, the previous wave of e-grocery research, there have been no significant positive changes in the way of product presentation.
At the moment, all online supermarkets don’t have a proper structure and fulfillment of the Product card, lack of quality and consistency of its materials and information.
This situation is even actual for the products of own brand (private label) that directly influence the company’s image and can bring a lack of trust from the customers’ side.
The world’s e-commerce players have been generating product content in manual and half-automated ways for thousands of SKUs for at least for decade already. Now, with AI tools’ availability, this process can be faster and save more money and effort. Maybe Portuguese retailers will skip the basic step of content production to take advantage of the generative AI.
3. Lack of functionality
At the moment customers don’t have all possible features as tools, helping them to buy online with confidence and keep their will to continue the experience of buying groceries online.
For example, no proper and clear logic in the recommendations of other products presented. When online supermarket shows an additional block in the Product card with the product offers part, some issues do not help the customer to make a purchase
- The product is not available currently,
- The product has no photo,
- Only one product is shown, and it’s the same product that the customer is looking into at the moment,
- No comment as to why this product is shown as recommended,
- Even if there is the option to see the ratings and reviews for the products, in a majority of cases there will be no data for the customer, because this feature is not highlighted by the retailers, so customers can find only a few ratings and reviews for the products through the all catalog.
4. Compared to other countries, Portugal has a couple of characteristics that enable the risk for e-commerce growth —
consumers in Portugal do have not-so-busy work schedules (more life-work balance), better weather during the year, offline stores that are well-located and easy to access, variety of local stores and markets. So the way of current presentation of e-grocery products online does not influence customers to change their grocery shopping behavior.
If e-grocery retailers accept the challenge to make e-grocery part of the business profitable and transform the willingness to develop the great customer experience in their online channels into the real design, development and release plan, probably in the next waves of the research we will testify improved online supermarkets feature set that can beat the Portuguese market characteristics mentioned above.
Using the materials of the research report can only be made with the link to the studio’s website.
Research reports to order
- e-grocery rating 2023 Portugal: Focus — Product card
- e-grocery rating 2023 Portugal: Full research with 700+ feature set study Full feature set benchmark, analysis of the market
Example: Best Portuguese online supermarkets 2022 rating by features
Studio’s other relevant services
- Customer Journey Audit and Actual Map
Example: Customer Journey Map Audit - Emotional design evaluating
Example: Emotional design analysis - Another type of research by request
References to the materials used in the article
- Deloitte Global Powers of Retailing Report 2023
- The State of Grocery Retail 2023 Europe report by McKinsey
- Europe E-Commerce Report 2023. Lone, S., & Weltevreden, J.W.J. (2023). 2023 European E-commerce Report. Amsterdam/Brussels: Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences & Ecommerce Europe
- Bright Pixel lidera ronda de 18 milhões de euros na Harmonya para transformar retalho
