As grocery inflation reaches 3.5%, personalised offers are a window to how consumers can minimise growing costs of monthly food bills
Will Broome, CEO of Ubamarket, discusses how AI can save even the most savvy of shoppers more precious pounds.
Last month, grocery inflation reached 3.5%, adding 拢15 onto an average monthly bill. While stock shortages and supply chain deadlock is dominating聽daily news agendas, supermarkets are being judged for what they can’t do, rather than what they can. For this reason, long-term聽transformative processes and innovations within the retail sector are being overlooked for short-term misgivings.
However, with the turn of the year and unabating worries over inflation in the coming months,聽trends that have been聽in their infancy over the past couple of years could lend a helping hand to such issues, through proponents聽such as white-label retail technology solutions like聽Ubamarket.
The Future of Offers and Discovery
While traditional price slashing聽is currently working for supermarkets, consumer habits are set to radicalise the ways in which they receive such offers. In today’s data-driven culture, investing in technology, particularly mobile apps which hyper-personalise the shopping experience for each consumer base, can help retailers to better target each individual customer. They can then better observe the shopping聽trends聽and continue to successfully make the in-store experience more appealing.
Signalling the desire for greater autonomy over the offers that they are provided, consumers have voiced their enthusiasm for data to have more influence on determining the offers they receive, uncovered in national research commissioned by Ubamarket – a white label retail tech pioneer that designs the Scan, Pay, Go app for Central England Co-op, EuroSPAR and Budgens, providing AI-driven personalised offers for users of the app.
- 52% of people in Britain聽(almost 24 million people)聽are happy for retailers to collect and use their consumer data if it means there are money saving opportunities attached to it聽(this figure increases to聽60%听for millennials)
- 24% of people in Britain聽(10 million people)聽say that UK food聽retail聽is one of the only sectors that they don鈥檛 mind receiving聽personalised offers聽from
- 23% of shoppers聽(over 9 million聽people)聽feel they have lost up to hundreds of pounds worth of savings and offers due to not always using their loyalty card
The data聽suggests that a considerable number of people would be likely to shop in-store if they were well-informed of discounts, for example, through an app or alerts.聽This would also suggest why continental discounters聽have become so competitive.
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Furthermore, Ubamarket’s data indicates that the mountain of loyalty cards racked up by shoppers is no longer effective. Introducing mobile technology which helps shoppers to track and earn points across multiple stores and retailers, can help customers to unlock the deals and money-saving opportunities and encourage them to frequent the physical stores.聽
Will Broome, CEO of Ubamarket, discusses how AI-driven offers are set to become far more prevalent in grocery retail.“Serving as the sole point of contact for millions through lockdown, supermarkets have proven to be vastly popular over the last year. The strength of supermarket Christmas sales has demonstrated how reliant we are on the grocery sector.“However, as聽the dust settles after Christmas, and looking ahead to a time beyond the pandemic, retailers will have to address the issues they faced pre-Covid, in conjunction with continual concerns over inflation. Even before the pandemic, 2019聽was an unbelievably tough year聽for the聽retail聽industry, with widely reported store closures across the country and constant announcements聽of falling sales figures, and retailers will have to ensure their purple patch of the last 21聽months isn’t forgotten about.“This means addressing the question of whether聽the physical store offers an attractive experience and compelling money-saving opportunities or not.“Our research clearly shows that a huge portion聽of consumers see personalised shopping and easy access to offers and loyalty benefits as key elements of their shopping experience.聽Incorporating technology, such as in-app payments and聽personalised offers, can make the high street offering as convenient as possible and encourage more footfall into stores. Technology gives shoppers a reason to get up off the couch and feel excited to shop in-person again, and at Ubamarket, we are committed to providing this technology to help traditional聽retailers not only survive but thrive.鈥�
