There has been plenty of innovation in technology in the UK grocery market this year. Here, tech analyst John Mercer outlines which will have the most impact on Christmas 2016.
1. Amazon Echo brings e-commerce off the screen and into the living room: Leading the charge to put IoT under the Christmas tree will be Amazon’s Echo device. The product is the latest from Amazon to bring online shopping into the home and away from the screen. Users can speak commands to Echo, in order to place Amazon orders, order pizzas from Dominos, request an Uber, play music or find information. Google is reportedly set to release a rival to Echo.
2. Amazon Dash buttons lock in loyalty in replenishment: These product-specific buttons for replenishing FMCGs, from chewing gum to cat food to laundry detergent support Amazon’s push into the grocery category. Estimates are half a million of these devices have now shipped worldwide. Moreover, the Dash order rate recently doubled to more than two button presses per minute, or a run rate of more than a million orders a year.
3. Mobile payments ramp up: Holiday 2016 is the first Christmas for Android Pay in the UK, bringing mobile payments to the nearly half of smartphone-owning Brits who use an Android phone. It is being joined by retailer-specific services such as PayQwiq from Tesco (currently being rolled out). More retailers’ payment apps look to be on the horizon: Inditex has launched a payment app called InWallet in Spain, and it could well roll this out to other countries. One caveat: we expect mobile payment to have less immediate impact in the UK than in the US, due to the UK already having widespread contactless payment, which the US does not have.
4. Rapid delivery apps roll out: Sainsbury’s has just extended its Chop Chop one-hour-delivery app to extra London postcodes. One of Amazon Fresh’s strengths is same-day delivery; Amazon utilizes third-party couriers, marking a break from the company-owned delivery fleets that are deployed by most UK grocery retailers. Tesco, meanwhile, has launched same-day click and collect on groceries.
5. Scan as you shop boosts productivity: Tesco has extended the option for customers to scan their shopping to more stores. The company says it now offers this in more stores than any other retailers. These kind of innovations should help boost productivity for grocery retailers that are squeezed by rising wage bills and declining like-for-likes.
6. Tesco automates replenishment with IFTTT: In a relatively low-key service offered via task-management service IFTTT (“If This, Then That”), Tesco shoppers can set up rules for products to be automatically added to their shopping baskets. For instance, customers can automatically add a product to their online cart if the price drops or if the temperature rises or on a scheduled day. It is the type of innovation we are used to seeing from Amazon.
7. Click-and-collect gets smarter and more productive: Enhanced click-and-collect experiences encompass Amazon lockers in Morrisons’s stores, automated kiosks for collections in Asda hypermarkets and new-generation Argos stores in Sainsbury’s supermarkets. Sainsbury is also launching digital click-and-collect points bringing together services for eBay, Tu clothing and DPD parcels. As click-and-collect volumes grow, the ad-hoc approach many retailers have used so far—i.e., the customer waiting around at the Customer Service desk while a member of staff looks for their order—is being replaced by smarter, more sophisticated, more automated services. The incentive for retailers is not just a better experience for the customer, but productivity gains as automation frees up staff hours.
8. Improving the conversation: Chatbots are automated customer-service agents helping online shoppers with queries. Nonfood retailers such as ASOS are already believed to be using Chatbots to help resolve standard queries online. While we have not yet found any major UK grocery retailers using Chatbots, we would not be surprised to see adoption among some players in the near future. Adjacent to this is the opening up of Whatsapp to businesses in 2016: we see opportunities for major retailers to embrace this communication channel to improve service.
9. Delivery robots trialed: Small, autonomous robotic vehicles delivering food orders are still at the trial stage, under a collaboration between Just Eat and Starship Technologies—but there is potential in such automated deliveries to help push down the cost of fulfilling online grocery orders.
10. Discounters get digital: Holiday 2016 is the first Christmas that Aldi will be selling online in the UK. The discounter can use this online presence to ramp up its appeal to the middle classes through its online wine offering, and to bargain hunters looking for gifts amid its weekly Specialbuys.
John Mercer, Analyst at Fung Global Retail & Technology
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