Himanshu PatelThe landscape of grocery fulfillment has experienced a dramatic shift from tripping to the grocery store to the mobile grocery shopping at the touch of a screen. The amplification of grocery shopping has made the lives of people even super easier; it has brought ample benefits to the grocery stores that have made the business available right in the pocket of the customers.
However, everything is not so rosy. The mobile grocery businesses are also facing challenges on another side, that’s negatively impacting the growth, sales, and revenue. We will take a look at the benefits and challenges that the voyage of grocery app development brings for the grocery stores.
How does grocery app development work like a pro?
- Build and strengthen your brand
With mobile app development, breaking the shackles, your grocery store may go international and can serve the needs of global customers as a reliable brand. Here, trust plays a vital role when users purchase grocery items. That’s why people prefer to buy groceries from the brand that offers the best products and experience rather than a local merchant.
Read more : How to Grow Your Food Delivery App During Coronavirus Circumstances (Covid-19 Crisis)?
The mobile app offers plenty of methods to build a brand that leaves an indelible impression on the customer’s mind. On mobile, with 24/7 availability, sending in-app notifications, and allowing users to share or access reviews, the grocery stores can build the repo. In the fierce competition, the grocery shopping app allows you to differentiate the brand, boost customer engagement, and nurture the brand.
- Know your customers 360-degree
The user’s data is the biggest asset to increase sales and revenue. With mobile shopping enablement, the micro-moments can be analyzed and when leveraged to reach the users, the results will be amazing.
For instance, the app helps business to analyze the time at which users shop the most, the top-selling products, most-used payment alternatives, and other parameters, which gives insights into user’s preferences and allow businesses customizing the app from user’s perspective.
- Lure in even the busiest customers
The mobile shopping is the most convenient form of purchase even for the people up to their neck. It eliminates the need to trip to different stores, view items in the aisles, and wait in long checkout queues, by allowing the users to complete the shopping while traveling or relaxing on the couch. The faster and easier way shopping groceries engage the users.
Read more : A Guide To Ecommerce Online Store Guest Checkout Best Practice!
With intensifying mobile usage, the more number of users will be shopping groceries on mobile and your business will get optimal chances to engage them and increase your sales by a good fraction.
- Enhance loyalty programs
The earned customers are a valuable asset to the company, that’s when turned into loyal fans, the results will be no less than wonders. As opposed to grocery stores, mobile grocers have more opportunities to bring the customers back to the online shop repetitively.
The push notifications can be sent for the loyalty programs, which include special privileges to repeat customers, extra discounts, or combo offers to keep the customer coming to the store and making a purchase. The notifications are the easiest form to reach the right customers at the right time with the right message.
The Challenges That Hinders The Business Growth:
- Storage and delivery cost
Grocery items such as fruits, milk, vegetables, and others are more perishable. For the storage of these items, the special infrastructure with huge space, refrigeration facilities, and right containers are required. In the event, the demands for the product drop, then the infrastructure cost will become overhead.
Also, to ensure the fresh products will be delivered to the customers from farms and storehouses, then the specialized delivery vans are required, which incurs a lot of investment. When the wrong product is delivered or delays are made in delivery, then it will be a loss to the company. Besides, people are not keen to pay delivery charges and nothing is charged against return product shipping.
In this manner, the cost of storage and delivery of the products becomes more than the cost of the product.
- Thin profit margins
In the android mobile app shopping era, people expect quality products, reasonable prices, good deals, speedy delivery, and zero shipping charges. Grocery shopping is no exception. As we have already discussed, from infrastructure management for storage to the supply chain, all the expenses are borne by the grocery store, which becomes a financial nightmare for the grocery stores.
Especially, in the case of perishable products, persuading the customers for the product’s freshness and offering discounts is a constant challenge.
- Inefficient delivery system
Impulse buying is not feasible with grocery app, but the irony of the grocery shopping is people don’t plan what they want to buy and when they order, they expect the items to get delivered the same day or within an hour. Delivering the items in hyper-local segments poses a big challenge before grocery stores. Additionally, maintaining quality, time, and cost comes by default in grocery delivery.
Furthermore, most of the people buying groceries online are not available at home all the time, which is another hurdle the mobile grocers have to handle for delivering the groceries at the time the users will be available.
- Changing customer habits
The deep-rooted behavior of the customers of buying groceries with the physical store by themselves becomes the major roadblock in grocery shopping. It makes it difficult to persuade the people for the quality they get while buying online groceries. The research had proven that due to this habit constraint, very less percent of users buy groceries on mobile.
Moreover, the shifting user’s preferences towards organic foods and insufficient organic supplies have made it difficult for the grocers to cope with the situation and meet the demand. Consequently, they suffer a huge monetary loss due to the unavailability of the items.
Read more : How E-Commerce App Development Company Can Ease Your Pain
The growing brand consciousness along with product quality has also become one of the major phenomena, which is making the users showing reluctant on buying online or opting for other variables.
The advanced technology product- voice search is also gaining traction and more favored by the users. If the mobile app is not providing the voice search feature, then they are losing the customers.
Epilogue
Grocery shopping is a huge untapped market that provides a lot of room to grow and prosper. The mobile grocery shopping has picked up the pace and increasingly people are counting on the apps for the groceries. Your grocery app idea rightly fit into today’s market dynamics, and the challenges are the part and parcel of the online grocery business, which you have to tackle to carve the way through them. Don’t hang fire. Be the early bird to earn perks.
