{"id":2420,"date":"2019-12-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/advantage-360\/click-collect-whos-really-buying-your-products\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T18:24:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T18:24:41","slug":"click-collect-whos-really-buying-your-products","status":"publish","type":"mrktblog-posts","link":"https:\/\/youradv.com\/mrktblog\/click-collect-whos-really-buying-your-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Click and Collect: Who\u2019s Really Buying Your Products?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the U.S. grocery retail marketplace, fundamental assumptions are made about retailer segmentation.<\/p>\n

For example, value retailers in grocery, dollar and mass typically win with lower-to-middle-income, middle-aged shoppers, while other retailers skew slightly younger and higher income. Right? These fundamental assumptions drive everything from product assortment to price and promotion structure to marketing strategies.<\/p>\n

But what if the assumptions we make about shoppers who spend their grocery dollars at specific retailers are wrong?<\/p>\n

Grocery shopping is undergoing a large-scale shift driven by the growth of online grocery sales, which is projected by the Food Marketing Institute to grow to $100 billion by 2022. It\u2019s no secret the winners, so far, have been Walmart and Amazon, which together owned an estimated two-thirds of consumers\u2019 \u201cmost recent online grocery purchases\u201d as of the end of 2018, according to The Retail Feedback Group.<\/p>\n

In response, grocery product manufacturers have been readying themselves for the growing use of click-and-collect and click-and-deliver retail options. They\u2019re creating best-in-class content, investing in search optimization and preparing their supply chain through optimal assortment and shipping strategies. However, the one piece of the click-and-collect conversation that gets little attention is this: On which retail websites are new online grocery shoppers choosing to shop?<\/p>\n

The Tale of the Online Shopper<\/h2>\n

Walmart, for example, has been open about its projections for online sales<\/a> to account for a significant portion of its total growth. Financial services firm Cowen estimates<\/a> that 40% to 60% of its buy-online, pick-up-curbside sales will be incremental, made by customers new to Walmart, many of whom will be next-generation shoppers.<\/p>\n

In short, in many cases, incremental sales bought off the digital shelf will be made by shoppers who have rarely stepped inside the retailer\u2019s brick-and-mortar stores. The shift to click-and-collect and click-and-deliver is fundamentally changing grocery retailers\u2019 shopper profiles. This illustrates a significant evolution in digital shelf optimization.<\/p>\n

To validate the extent that online shoppers may differ from in-store shoppers, Atlas, an Advantage Digital Technology company, took to a look at sales and assortment data at a traditional value retailer. Leveraging our proprietary basket analysis tools, we looked at sales of selected clients\u2019 products through click-and-collect versus in-store ring. In one case, we found online sales of a mainstream brand\u2019s products labeled \u201cnatural\u201d indexed two times higher than its in-store sales of those products. Another client\u2019s coffee pod sales were 1.5 times higher as a share of their total sales, online versus in-store.<\/p>\n

Brands and retailers are feeling the impact \u2014 good and bad \u2014 of the growth of online grocery sales. One consumer goods company came to us after experiencing considerable in-store out-of-stocks on a high-retail, single-serve item that over-indexes with health-conscious consumers. Analyzing their online versus offline sales trend data, we found nearly 20% of the item\u2019s sales came through click-and-collect, compared to the brand average of 5%. Clearly, a new shopper had entered the picture.<\/p>\n

Reassessing shoppers<\/h3>\n

As data confirms, new customers with new preferences are shopping online and it\u2019s more critical than ever for retailers and consumer goods companies to mine \u2014 and share \u2014 data insights.<\/p>\n

Here are three ways to reassess old assumptions about who is buying what, where.<\/p>\n