Conclusion

As a retailer fighting for market share in 2022 and beyond, you are presented with innumerable challenges. From evolving market dynamics constantly affecting consumer preferences to inflation and recession hurting their wallets, there’s a series of uncertainties you need to prepare for to maintain steady growth and profitability in the near future. The silver lining is that all the data and research we’ve gathered and studied has been helpful in pinpointing towards the trends that are here to stay and shape the future of grocery retail. 

Personalization of grocery shopping experiences, for example, has become pivotal to success for regional as well as global retailers. Different consumer segments have varying preferences and expectations and generic experiences don’t attract or retain customers anymore, let alone encourage brand loyalty. Similarly, the future is going to be all about omnichannel as research has clearly pointed out that most grocery shoppers have interacted with retailers via more than one channel and are likely to continue doing so. 

Therefore, delivering a delightful online or in-store shopping experience alone wouldn’t cut it any longer. You need to build an integrated omnichannel grocery shopping ecosystem wherein customers have the option to choose the channel they use to engage with your brand, to shop from, and the mode via which they want to get their orders fulfilled – all offering a consistent experience that reinforced your brand. The only silver bullet is embracing technology and integrated solutions that allow you to build a centralized platform via which you can manage all your operations and digital storefronts. 

Cost and convenience are two very critical tenets of omnichannel grocery – something that shoppers value more than anything else. To attract the modern grocery shopper, you will need to keep experimenting with your pricing, membership, and fulfillment strategies to optimize for maximum convenience and reduced cost. 

Finally, customer experience is going to play an indispensable role in the future of grocery retail. Shoppers are inundated with choice and after having experienced the good, bad, and ugly of omnichannel grocery shopping, they are more confident of their expectations than ever before. 

For retailers, managing omnichannel experiences can be tougher, creating a wider scope for errors and missed opportunities. However, it’s definitely worth spending time and resources toward improving the quality of experiences given its direct correlation with customer satisfaction. 

In the end, what’s going to matter the most is how well retailers are able to adapt to oscillating customer preferences, rising expectations, and changing requirements that inevitably challenge business strategies and cause operational inefficiencies. 

But, to do so, retailers are going to need a trusted solution that they can build their entire omnichannel grocery strategy on and stay ahead of the competition. And Mercatus has proven to be that reliable technological partner for many fast-growing retailers and has helped them boost profitability and share of wallet in turbulent market dynamics. 

Partner With Mercatus to Futureproof Your Grocery Brand 

Grocers looking to build and deliver best-in-class online shopping experiences rely on Mercatus. Designed and built exclusively for grocery retailers, the Mercatus Platform is a multi–tenant, white-label headless commerce platform that can scale to the size of your online business. 

The platform offers everything you need to build omnichannel grocery experiences that attract, convert, and retain today’s grocery shoppers. With over 50 pre-built technology integrations, including to fulfillment partners of your choice, and our commitment to continuous innovation cycles, the Mercatus Platform can be pivotal to success in today’s grocery retail landscape: 

• Complete control of your digital experiences with integrations to meet the specific needs of your business. Full access to your customer data and absolute jurisdiction over the quality of services your customers receive
• Increased convenience for your customers who can choose to shop via their preferred channel and get their orders fulfilled as per their chosen method, on a 
• Decreased operational and fulfillment costs as you get to offset some of your expenses by switching to a first-party platform, building a loyalty program, managing pricing more efficiently, and much more 
• Higher customer loyalty as you give shoppers what they want, reinforce your brand values across channels, offer personalized coupons and offers, and incentivize them for repeat purchases   
• Absolutely no compromise as you can avoid third-party platforms that eat into your profits, encourage customers to cherry-pick, and control the end-to-end shopper experience

With Mercatus, everything you need to build and deliver an indispensable omnichannel grocery strategy is available at your disposal. Our grocery experts have brought it all together into one seamless, integrated solution that is highly configurable to the unique requirements of your brand. If that sounds like something you’d want to explore for your business, get in touch with our experts to discuss how we can make it a reality for you.