In this first episode of our series on hyper-personalization, we focus on recurring purchases, with a particular emphasis on the food sector. These purchases, which occur very regularly, are often seen as everyday obligations – the well-known “chore shopping” – but they also represent a major opportunity for e-commerce retailers to retain customers and boost sales.
The COVID-19 health crisis has accelerated the shift to online food shopping, permanently transforming consumer habits. To remain competitive, players in the sector must now provide a fast, seamless, and relevant shopping journey. Hyper-personalization emerges as a key lever: it allows retailers to better understand each customer, tailor content and recommendations to their needs, and make the shopping experience more efficient while encouraging impulse purchases.
In this episode, we will explore concrete examples of solutions implemented by market leaders, such as Ocado, illustrating how hyper-personalization transforms recurring shopping into a powerful driver of customer loyalty and business performance.
Regular purchase: a look at the food sector
By its nature, regular shopping recurs frequently (e.g. once or twice a week). It often equates to buying necessities and sometimes, as we all know, it can be a chore. The most common example of regular shopping is in the food sector.
The COVID-19 health crisis boosted the online sale of consumer goods. Consumers, forced to stay at home, turned to delivery services or click and collect to carry out their shopping. In the food sector, e-commerce is now here to stay: it has definitively entered consumer habits and its growth continues. Online food shopping has grown 13% in 2021, building its share of the market to 9%. [1]
Many players have yet to optimise the shopping experience itself. For 47% of companies in this sector who are seeking to grow, the online experience has become a priority.[2]This optimisation will have one main objective: to streamline the user experience in order to improve loyalty. The main challenge is to use hyper-personalization to make the shopping experience more efficient and less time-consuming for the customer. Don’t lose sight of your objective as a merchant, however, and aim to trigger impulse purchases that will increase basket size and boost your margins.
To achieve this objective, it is vital to know each customer in order to offer them relevant products and to adapt your screen layouts in accordance with their shopping needs, habits and tastes.
Let’s look at some inspiring real-life examples of hyper-personnalisation.
Personalizing screen layout to streamline shopping
Adapting the screen layout for each customer according to their preferences and consumption habits gives them more time to spend on shopping.
Let’s take the example of Ocado, a British company specializing in online food shopping.
In the shopping journey shown here, Ocado offers the visitor the option of creating a “food profile” during their first session. This feature allows the customer to enter ingredients that they or their family are allergic to. Studies have shown that 83% of consumers are willing to share personal information in order to have a personalized experience.
In future searches, products that contain these ingredients will be flagged in the results list. For all subsequent sessions, the customer can see at a glance any products that are not suitable for them or another member of their family. A reminder is also provided on the product page.
This saves valuable time. It avoids the customer having to open each product page to check the ingredients of a product before being able to place it in their basket.
Customers find this hyper-personalized display invaluable once they have tried it, and it becomes a major contributor to loyalty. Customers who believe that companies are succeeding at offering personalized shopping experiences shop more than 3 times more frequently.[3]
[1] Source FEVAD
[2]Salesforce study
[3] Epsilon study
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