Gilad Simhony opinion quote

The current retail marketplace is proving a challenging environment for brands. With retailers now stocking up to 30% own brand, along with the supermarket price war, discounters and over-promotion, brands and manufacturers face an uphill battle for success.

Even more challenging for brands is NPD, particularly when it comes to online shopping.

There are predictions online grocery sales will reach £15bn by 2020 and with as many as half of Brits currently online grocery shoppers, we must prioritise online in our NPD strategies.

But with large budgets and marketing spend required to launch new products, just how does a brand penetrate the market successfully?

For online grocers it starts with the most strategic shopping area for shoppers, that being Favourites. With more than 50% of shoppers making selections online using Favourites, breakthrough to shoppers’ Favourites lists is crucial to success. We know once a SKU enters a shopper’s Favourites, the probability of repeat purchases is highly increased and this goes beyond just basic sales performance. If you have 10 shoppers with a SKU in their Favourites, they carry a much higher lifetime value than one shopper who buys 10 units of that SKU.

MySupermarket has also found that not only are more shoppers starting their e-grocery experience in Favourites, but those who do also spend more on their shop, add more products to their basket, and spend less time on their shop before checkout.

It is critical to understand what causes the product to be added to baskets and marketing spend should be optimised to track NPD penetration to the Favourites list. We know online shoppers are unlikely to scroll through pages of results to find a suitable product.

Understanding the entire customer journey online will enable you to better understand where your digital investment should be prioritised. If a brand wants to build lifetime relationships with shoppers it must understand in-depth, actionable insights available from shopper data and act upon this data across grocery retailers.

Gilad Simhony is CEO of MySupermarket