Name: Rachel Eyre
Job title: Chief customer & marketing officer
How have online habits and orders started to change since restrictions began to ease? During the pandemic our online sales tripled. Since restrictions began to ease, we’ve continued to see more customers choosing Morrisons.com and our digital channels than pre-pandemic. We’re now able to service more customers than ever before across the UK with click & collect offered in over 350 stores (up from just 14 pre-pandemic).
Do you expect online’s share to drop now that restrictions across the UK are ending? Latest IGD data predicts the online grocery market will continue to grow a further 1.8% during 2022. We’ve also seen 12-week Kantar data showing digital orders accounted for 12.5% of all grocery spend, which is almost double pre-pandemic.
What moves have been made to reduce plastic consumption in the dotcom business? For orders picked in our stores for deliveries and click & collect orders we deliver orders bagless, saving 98 million plastic bags from being used every year. We also offer loose produce for our customers, which is hand-picked by our colleagues and offers a plastic-free option for our customers. As a wider business, this week we announced a move to become the first UK supermarket to switch our own brand fresh milk to cartons to reduce plastic and carbon emission. From mid-February, nine types of Morrisons fresh milk will be sold in Tetra Pak cartons to save an initial 100 tonnes of plastic a year. We’ve also moved most of our own-label fresh juice from plastic bottles to cartons - to remove another 678 tonnes of plastic per annum.
Another recent initiative is the launch of paper-wrapped toilet and kitchen rolls to limit plastic waste and increase the use of recyclable packaging in customers’ homes.
How do you get round the picking problems involved with selling more loose fruit online? Morrisons Market Street and fresh food is a key part of our online offer. All of our pickers are trained to ensure they pick products they would buy themselves, ensuring quality produce with a good shelf life is delivered to our customers.
What have you done to help customers facing inflation? Our delivery pass offers value to our customers with savings of up to £167 available (based on one shop per week at an average delivery cost of £3.89). And through our MyMorrisons loyalty scheme, customers can receive personalised digital offers with money off their next shop both online and in store.
How important to the future of your online operation is rapid delivery and what are the latest development? Rapid delivery is really important to our customers and is a growing market in the UK. We regularly listen to customers to understand what is important to them and to help us develop our offer. Our Deliveroo partnership allows customers to get a top-up shop in under 30 minutes. They can even get items delivered to their door in as little as 10 minutes via Deliveroo Hop. Through our partnership with Amazon, Prime members can enjoy Morrisons groceries with free same day delivery or click & collect when they spend over £40. We are now also offering same-day delivery and click & collect in certain locations from Morrisons.com. So whichever channel our customers shop with us online they can get food they want, when they want it.
How affected has the Morrisons online operation been by the recent storms? Our drivers worked carefully to ensure we delivered safely to customers who had ordered during that time. We gave drivers more time to do the deliveries. We also had briefings on our extreme weather conditions process.
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