Mercatus Technologies Inc

Is Instacart's recent partnership with UberEats helpful or harmful to grocers? A new “Restaurants” tab on Instacart, powered by UberEats, will allow users to place orders with nearby restaurants and track deliveries from Uber couriers. This move heightens competition for high-convenience, high-margin items like meal kits, ready-to-go foods, and prepared meals — areas where grocers have traditionally excelled. It also pushes grocers to ask themselves a serious question: Are you limiting your first-party engagement with an overreliance on third-party convenience? By aggregating multiple retailers on a single platform, third-party delivery apps can shift the competition from service and quality to price — putting grocers at a disadvantage. To learn more about the importance of prioritizing first-party engagement, enabling direct interactions with customers and fostering loyalty without third-party interference, read our latest article on the impact of third parties on grocery retail: https://mct.media/3V0KOFJ

More and more American households are turning to Walmart, Target, and other large retailers for their grocery needs. Grocers must stem the tide and regain their lost market share. But how? How can regional grocers compete with the inherent pricing advantage of a mammoth retail giant like Walmart, that can also afford to try multiple customer retention strategies from discount deliveries to new private labels? In our all-new TopShelf Webinar, we present a strategy designed to level the playing field and help grocers win back their market share lost to mass merchants. We call this innovative approach contextualized commerce. It blends tradition and technology to not only provide customers with the value and convenience they seek from bigger retails, but also bring the traditional high-touch, high-level, in-store customer service into the digital experience—something that the larger retailers can’t match. Not only does this webinar define and demonstrate the benefits of this strategy; it also shows how AisleOne makes implementation easy without the typical operational hurdles that get in the way of new technology solutions. Watch this webinar to learn how to boost active users, increase average order values, and ultimately expand your market share. Click the link to access this highly informative session and read our thorough notes to help you implement the strategies discussed: https://mct.media/3RJMh16

What's the best way for grocers to grow their sales? By exerting control over their customer experience and making every interaction they have with shoppers memorable, engaging, and streamlined. Mercatus empowers grocers to achieve this. As the tech partner of choice for more than 1,800 regional grocery chain stores in the United States and 400+ independent grocers globally, we design all of our products and solutions to give retailers greater control over your customer data, journey, and experience. Learn firsthand how our platform can transform your customer experience. Click the link to set up a free demo and tour our leading solution for grocers: https://mct.media/3Oy1vTz

Why are Mass Merchants able to take a larger share of the eGrocery market? Their ability to meet consumer demand for lower prices is an enormous advantage. But their success is also due to engaging customers both online and in-store. While price-matching isn't a realistic tactic for regional and independent grocers, they can take a page out of the big retailer's playbook, lean into their own inherent advantages as members of the local community, and better engage customers through an omnichannel strategy. Here’s how: ✅ Deep Customer Insights Utilize customer data — customer shopping behaviors, spending patterns, and preferences — to create personalized shopping experiences. ✅ Seamless Omnichannel Experience Integrate online and offline shopping for a cohesive experience, ensuring efficient inventory management and smooth customer transitions between channels. ✅ Consistent Brand Presence Ensure your brand voice and messaging are consistent across all touchpoints, from digital platforms to physical stores. ✅ Exceptional Customer Service Emphasize the high-touch, high-level customer service — both online and in-store — that grocers have a reputation for providing. ✅ Adapt and Innovate Stay updated with the latest news, technology, and industry trends to continuously enhance your service offerings. While big retailers have a pricing edge, regional and independent grocers can find a way to compete by better engaging customers.

Have you heard about contextualized commerce? We presented our workshop on this innovative strategy at GroceryTech 2024—and now we’ve made a webinar on contextualized commerce available to grocers just like you. In this important session you’ll learn how contextualized commerce seamlessly integrates both online and in-store grocery shopping to provide a deeply personalized, high-touch, high-service customer experience across all channels. In addition to showing you the benefits of this approach, we’ll provide you with the means of implementing it — without the operational burdens traditionally associated with new tech — through AisleOne. It’s all right here in the link below: 1) the strategy to regain your market share, 2) the means by which to enact it, and 3) the partnership you need to optimize it. Click here to access the webinar and read our detailed notes on this highly informative session:https://mct.media/3RJMh16

A third of regular Supermarket customers are also buying groceries from a large national retailer each month. These numbers have been more or less consistent over the last three years, suggesting that as value becomes a stronger driver of consumer behavior, customers are on the lookout for the best deal possible. Here are three ways grocers can fight this cross-shopping trend and better retain their customers: 📈 Enhance Personalization & Loyalty Programs Utilize customer data to create personalized shopping experiences and robust loyalty programs with tailored discounts and exclusive offers. 🌟 Focus on Differentiation Offer locally sourced and artisanal products to stand out. Highlight their quality and local origin to create a unique shopping experience. 🛒 Improve Customer Experience — Online and In-Store Make online shopping more customer-centric and integrate it with in-store activities. Offer curbside pickup and seamless navigation through mobile apps. Each of these strategies is designed to keep your customers engaged on your platform and not bargain-hunting on a competitor's. For more insights like this, watch our latest episode of TopShelf Spotlight: https://mct.media/3WwlyIo

More households bought groceries online in May, but overall eGrocery sales still dipped. Why? Analysis of the data from this month’s Brick Meets Click / Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey shows that while more people might have been buying groceries online, individual households weren’t making the multiple purchases they were a year ago. By diving even deeper into the data, we see that the increase in MAUs was largely driven by lapsed customers returning to online grocery shopping. This should spark some curiosity from grocers interested in bringing their lapsed customers back. But how can you effectively target this customer type? Once again, technology provides the answer: 1. Collect your first-party customer data. 2. Utilize it to identify key customer behaviors and segments — including lapsed. 3. Deploy an automated, targeted campaign for lapsed users based on their specific purchase patterns, shopping behaviors, and browsing history. What we’re describing above is the deep personalization that comes from contextualized commerce. Through contextualized commerce, grocers can encourage repeat purchases from multiple customer segments simply by timing messages to align with customer behavior and purchase cycles. To learn more about delivering efficient personalization at scale, read our full analysis of May’s Brick Meets Click / Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey: https://mct.media/3KN4abh

It’s not just talk. Grocers can compete with big retailers and regain their market share. We show you how in our all-new TopShelf Webinar. In this highly informative session, you’ll learn… ° How to create a localized, personalized, and connected shopping experience for your customers. ° Why value and convenience drive modern consumer behavior and how to bring these drivers into your traditional service offering. ° How to use first-party data to enhance customer interactions, both online and in-store. ° How AisleOne provides an end-to-end, frictionless digital shopping experience through predictive personalization. ° Why contextualized commerce is the key to boosting active users, increasing average order values, and ultimately expanding your market share. This is an opportunity you don't want to miss. Click the link below to access the webinar and read our detailed notes on the session: https://mct.media/3RJMh16

The Q1 2024 Market Share Report from Brick Meets Click reveals how larger retailers are continuing to capture a larger portion of the eGrocery market. At Mercatus, we're dedicated to helping grocers regain their market share by providing the tools they need to provide exceptional customer experiences. Our solutions are designed to provide a seamless omnichannel grocery shopping experience for customers that drives sales from online and in-store shopping. We offer grocers: ✨ A comprehensive eCommerce platform designed to enhance shopper engagement. ✨ An advanced personalization solution that allows grocers to send millions of personalized emails each week, tailored to individual customer preferences and shopping history. Equip your business with the best tools in the industry by reaching out to Mercatus today: https://mct.media/4bkLI5V

We've all seen the data. We know how inflation is impacting consumer behavior. And we also know how Mass Merchants are leveraging their pricing advantage to win customers looking for lower prices. Instead of trying to compete on per product price points — and risk profitability — grocers should remember that value isn't always about lower prices. One effective approach to communicating value to consumers is introducing threshold offers that significantly reduce delivery costs for consumers — while consolidating orders and increasing average order value. It's also worth noting that consumers tend to show greater price sensitivity on individual items rather than the total cost of their online grocery orders. By shifting focus aways from per-item price points to overall value and convenience, grocers can keep customers satisfied — without getting caught up in a price war.