Strategies for grocery e-commerce stores to beat food inflation

The rise in food prices has made many grocery brands face the toughest path in the grocery market. The entire grocery business industry is struggling due to food inflation. Consumers are feeling the heat of the grocery prices and many of them have planned to reduce their shopping.

The covid-19 pandemic has drastically changed consumers’ buying behavior as many of them have transformed grocery eCommerce stores to purchase grocery items. But still, strict lockdowns in several regions have seriously affected the growth of eCommerce grocery stores.

To bring back to form, we need to implement some advanced tech-driven strategies that can uplift your grocery eCommerce store. Before getting into those strategies we need to first realize what impact that food inflation made in the grocery industry.

How is food inflation impacting the grocery industry?

Are you into the grocery business? Then you should be more worried about food inflation as it is directly affecting your grocery store turnover. Check out how this inflation has affected the lives of your consumers.

• Rise in production and labor costs due to strict lockdowns and supply chain disruptions.
• Soaring shipping and transportation costs as there is a hike in gasoline prices and also a shortage of truck drivers.
• The hoarding of food products has caused a major impact on the shortage of food items in the market.
• The undernourishment rate has increased due to the shortage of food products and this has increased the mortality rate.

Reasons that force the grocery industry to transform

Many leading grocery eCommerce stores are struggling more to survive in the market. Every day they are trying to find innovative eCommerce solutions that will make their grocery eCommerce platform get more audience and better conversions.

If you are still running your brick-and-mortar grocery store then there are a lot of chances of losing the race in the highly competitive market. It is time to go for a digital transformation and start building an eCommerce platform for your grocery store.

Let us try to figure out the reasons why this grocery industry is forcing every entrepreneur to online to protect their grocery business.

Unstable market –market volatility is one of the main reasons that push grocers to have an online grocery portal. After the pandemic, consumers have shown a difference in their shopping behavior and there is a disruption in the supply chain too. Having an eCommerce grocery app will support consumers to place their orders online and can get them delivered to their doorstep.

New competition – all omnichannel merchandisers have started transforming their grocery business and many leading eCommerce brands like Amazon have acquired Whole foods and have stepped into the grocery market. So, the competition is going to be tough and you should be well-equipped to beat the competition for that you need a perfect online weapon.

Impressive customer loyalty programs – every grocer will know the importance of customer loyalty programs. This is the key tool to satisfy and retain existing customers with our business. To have an effective customer loyalty program, you need to rely on the perfect grocery eCommerce store.

Reviews influencing consumers – consumers always rely on others’ experience and 8 out of 10 consumers will check online reviews about the product before they decide to buy it. Likewise, they will also visit the eCommerce platform for groceries and then they will try to purchase through the platform. So, it is very essential to think about digital transformation.

New delivery models – There are many new delivery models like BOPIS, curbside pickup, and door-to-door are getting popular among consumers. They started experiencing these delivery models and are enjoying the convenience to the core. If you still stick to your physical grocery store then you are going to lose the major audience of your business.

Proven strategies for grocery eCommerce stores to beat food inflation

It is good to have a change of mind to build an eCommerce store for groceries. But you should not think that once you build the online grocery platform you will be able to catch hold of the market and also the audience.

That is not true and you need to put more additional effort into making your grocery eCommerce store unique from your competitors. You need to keep yourself updated with the latest trends that are getting a greater response from consumers. Let us analyze the result-driven strategies and trends that will support your grocery business to escalate.

Reduce inventory and cut expenses

We cannot pass the inflation on to consumers. To handle the current situation, we need to reduce the assortment of certain food products. There is no need to offer dozens of varieties for a single product in this period of inflation.

You can have one option for one particular food item. You can check with your eCommerce grocery platform and through analytics, you can find out the least ordered item. You can eliminate those products from your inventory on the whole.

Delisting these items will never let you face loss or will upset your customers. You can buy more quantities of the same brand which will give you greater negotiation power and you can get them at the least cost. So, you can reduce inventory by delisting the least purchased products and can reduce all expenses.

Buy from local farmers and save purchase costs

You need to think about preferring to export products from other places. When you export grocery items you need to pay higher shipping and transportation costs. This will also impact customer pricing and customers will be forced to pay more for those products.

Instead of going for CPG brands, you can start investing in local farms where you can guarantee fresh products to your customers. Also, you may not spend more on shipping costs and can offer the same to the customer at a lower price.

Customers will also prefer to buy fresh and organic products that too in affordable pricing. So start using local private brands in your grocery eCommerce store and ease the grocery bills of your consumers.

Personalize consumers’’ shopping experience

Delivering an improved shopping experience to your customers will make your grocery eCommerce store stand ahead of your competitors. Customers always prefer to get personalized services that will make them feel greater and more comfortable.

You can keep tracking all your customers’ preferences through their purchases and can suggest products that match their preferences. This will delight them and will make them buy those suggested products too.

• 78% of consumers have stated that they started shopping online mainly for the personalization experience.
• 48% of buyers buy products that are suggested by the platform as their preference.
• 57% of shoppers have agreed that they will not look for other grocery eCommerce platforms as their existing platform is offering the best customer service.

Grocery eCommerce platforms that offer better personalization gain a 15% increase in customer base mainly through word-of-mouth from their existing customers.

Lean on social media for greater reach

Never underestimate the power of social media when you run an online grocery business. This is the source place where you can find all your active target audience. By just opting for a perfect campaign, you can easily grab the attention of your audience.

The main challenge for any eCommerce grocery store during this period of inflation is getting more traffic to their platform. Shoppers started showing aversion to spending more time on grocery platforms. To change this approach, you need to cover social media channels.

How to grab the attention of grocery eCommerce stores through social media?

• Create your brand page in all channels.
• Keep posting content which can be in video, text, or infographic form about your offers and arrivals regularly.
• Run paid campaigns about your products and services by targeting the right audience.
• Maintain all generated leads and hand over the leads to the marketing team who will take care of conversion.
• Keep posting customers’ testimonials about your positive.

Build a mobile application for your grocery store

You might have an online grocery portal where customers need to visit your portal through their browser and shop online. Remember online businesses mainly rely on user experience. If you provide a better user experience then you can easily survive in the market.

• 80% of shoppers prefer brands that have a dedicated mobile application for shopping.
• 65% of shoppers admitted that they will leave the portal if it is not device responsive.
• 89% of buyers are using their smartphones to buy online products.
• Millions of downloads have reached in Android Play Store, especially for grocery apps.

All these figures prove that m-commerce is gaining commendable attention and consumers also prefer mobile grocery applications to buying groceries online.

How to build a grocery eCommerce store?

Hope many of you have decided to create an eCommerce grocery store and make a huge profit out of it. But building an eCommerce platform for grocery business is not a simple and easy one. More market knowledge is needed and you need strong technical back-end support to push your online grocery business forward.

We, appkodes, have a skilled technical team who can guide you in building your dream eCommerce grocery store and help you to acquire more customers. We can create an eCommerce grocery store from scratch or even we can give you a ready-to-use grocery platform. According to your requirement and budget, we can tailor your needs and deliver the best eCommerce grocery store.

Conclusion

Hope all these strategies will support your grocery eCommerce store to survive in this period of inflation. Never miss even a single opportunity to impress your customers and always keep proving to yourself that you are far ahead of your competitors.

Always keep an eye on technology advancements and make sure you implement them on your platform and get better attention and reach.