As the holiday season approaches, supermarkets start to gear up for their busiest time of the year. We all like to eat, drink and be merry, and that means big business for supermarkets and grocery stores. In the UK, for example, in 2023 shoppers made 488 million grocery shopping trips in the four weeks before Christmas. Being busy is great, but it is also the time that any inefficiencies, or shortcomings in operational procedures are really going to show.

Retail technology can offer the gift of efficiency, customer engagement and profit. So for a supermarket looking to ensure they get their share of holiday season joy all year round, just what are the priorities to look for in a retail technology solution. Here’s our take on what makes it onto the ‘nice’ (not the ‘naughty’) list:

1. Frictionless checkout and customer experience: holiday season is a joyful, but very busy, time of year for shoppers. They don’t want to be standing in queues waiting to pay for their special treats. Making them wait, not offering the payment methods they want, or not making it easy to organize delivery for their online shop – these are all things that will send them to your competition faster than a reindeer can pull a sleigh. The future is frictionless, so it’s essential to have a retail technology platform that helps you to give your shoppers a positive experience – in your store or on their screen.
2. Customer loyalty: whether they shop in your physical or digital store, you want customers who keep coming back to you. Supermarket shoppers love loyalty programs and 94% are members of at least one. Like a puppy, loyalty isn’t just for Christmas, so ensure you choose a retail technology solution that allows you to build and manage loyalty all year round – by designing engaging programs for customers to ‘earn and burn’ loyalty points and making them feel known and valued.
3. Use promotions to boost sales and manage inventory: Whether it’s a special offer, a discount, or multi-buy, promotions are the gift that gives on giving, all year round. Promotions are the biggest influence of impulse purchases – they bring in new customers, encourage loyalty amongst existing customers, and can be used to move over-stocked or soon to be out of date items. Managing promotions can be a headache, but a retail tech platform with a built in promotions management function makes light work of promotions, ensuring you have the flexibility to adapt, and change offers to engage and retain shoppers.
4. Omnichannel transactions: some shoppers want to shop in-store, others want to buy online for delivery, and there are those that want to combine the two with click and collect. The same person may want to shop in all three ways at different times. However they want to buy from you, they’re all valuable customers and you need to ensure that you have a retail technology solution that caters to all their needs, offering them the same experience, the same loyalty, the same promotions, wherever and whenever they choose to engage with you.
5. Manage stock:success in the supermarket world relies heavily on having the right items in the right place at the right time. Sounds straightforward but it’s a logistical juggling feat – one that can be made easier though with a technology platform that incorporates a single view of inventory, and smart stock management features, such as automated re-ordering.
6. Integration: a supermarket operation is more than just its stores of course. Stores, distribution centers, and the head office are all essential. Just like the sweet singing of a holiday choir, every part needs to be in harmony with the others and integrated seamlessly with the rest of the operation. So supermarkets need a technology platform that enables interaction and communication between the different operating centers, so that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
7. Operational efficiency: operating a supermarket efficiently requires information that is accurate, up-to-date and easily accessible. Managers need to have a real-time view of what is happening in their stores, warehouses and logistics operations in order to make timely and meaningful management decisions. A retail technology platform must be able to present managers with the information they need, wherever they are in the store or warehouse – at a glance and at their fingertips.

Running a supermarket is a challenge, especially at this time of year. But tech can help, especially if you use our checklist of the seven key priorities and ensure that you select a retail solution that will bring you holiday cheer, all year round.

FAQs

What is ‘single view of inventory’ and why is it important?

Single view of inventory means that in a single system, you can see stock that is in stores or in warehouses or distribution centers. Rather than having separate systems, the information is all pulled together into a single view. The reason that it’s important is to help get the right goods to the right place – that is, where there are customers who want to buy them. So if stocks of, say, tomato ketchup are very low in one store, but they’re not selling in another, you can consider whether it’s more efficient to fulfill from the warehouse, or whether, if the two stores are close, you would be better to take stock from one store (where it risks not being sold) and move it to another, with higher demand.

How can a supermarket use promotions?

There are many different ways that a supermarket can use promotions to attract and retain customers. The first step is to understand customer buying patterns, using smart retail analytics to analyze sales data. Once you understand what shoppers buy, with what, when and where, you can build promotions that will encourage more of that behaviour, or which are designed to build new behaviours. Promotions aren’t limited to discounts – they could be multi-buys, cross sells and upsells, or a loyalty point boost. The more flexible your promotions engine, the more you can try in order to find the perfect promotion for your supermarket.

Content Sources:

BBC

PWC

The Grocer

Clear Channel