By Mike Schlegelmilch and Susan Viamari, IRI

E-commerce has been a hot topic for years, but 2020 will go down in the record books as the year that the online shopping flame exploded into a raging inferno.

Understanding the impact of e-commerce sales on in-store behaviors is critical to long-term success for traditional brick-and-mortar stores. According to Forrester’s US Online Grocery Snapshot: Q1 2021, offline grocery sales in North America in 2020 grew 6%, while online grocery sales grew an astounding 48%, no doubt driven in large part by COVID-19, which rapidly accelerated the e-commerce trend.

Below is an example of the impact COVID-19 has had at a large CPG retailer. In late March/early April 2020, its online sales surged more than 200% versus a year ago as shoppers looked to load their pantries from the safety of their homes. The retailer had already been focused on building its omnichannel presence and asked IRI for help with developing a data-driven approach to keep its strategy in lockstep with escalating omnichannel trends.
 

IRI’s Collaborative Gateway Solutions provided the granularity needed to meet this objective. The biggest benefit of these collaboration platforms is their integrated data. Product movement data is interesting and important, for sure. But by integrating loyalty insights with product movement data, retailers and their supplier partners can zero in on critical shopper segments to understand evolving shopping behaviors – online and in the store – and influence those shoppers with personalized messages at critical engagement points.

Digital marketing experts estimate that consumers are exposed to 4,000-10,000 marketing messages each day, so ensuring that your message is relevant and powerful is critical. With messages that resonate, customer retention – and customer growth – becomes much easier.

With IRI’s Collaborative Gateway Solutions, you can get loyalty insights for many major retailers across the U.S.:

Across the omnichannel marketplace, loyalty insights allow you to understand:

• Are shoppers buying more frequently online or in the store?
• Is the average transaction size higher or lower online versus in the store?
• Is the transaction size driven by more variety in the basket or more stock-up of certain products/brands?
• Are consumers more likely to stock up on your brand online or in the store?
• Is the average price paid higher/lower online versus in the store?

Data-driven answers to these questions and many more help marketers create more impactful programs. Check out how a large grocery retailer is using loyalty data to better understand its online shoppers.