The DataWeave Blog

Category: E Commerce

Prime Day UK 2022 – highlights from the 2 day annual shopping festival!
Prime Day launched in 2015 as a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Amazon’s founding & has quickly become the biggest shopping event of the year for Amazon. Prime Day is a great opportunity for customers to snag fantastic deals on products they might not otherwise consider buying. Last year, Amazon Prime Day was a tremendous success, with Prime members spending billions of dollars on discounted items. In 2022 alone, global sales during the event reached a new record high of $12 Bn.

18 countries participated in Prime Day this year, including the US. We did a deep dive into what happened in the UK – the discounts Amazon offered and categories with the highest discounts as well as checked to see if other retailers tweaked their pricing strategy to compete with Amazon on Prime Day.

Methodology
- In addition to Amazon UK, we tracked some key retailers on 12 & 13th July 2022, on Prime Day.
  Retailers tracked – eBay UK, OnBuy, Selfridges, ASOS.com, Net-A-Porter
- Categories tracked – Electronics, Wine & Spirits, Grocery, Furniture, Fashion, Beauty.
- We looked at Additional Discounts offered on Prime Day: Additional Discount is the extra discount on an item during Prime Day when compared to the Pre-Prime day price.
- We also looked at Post Prime Day Discounts, which were the discounts offered after the 2-day event ended.
Did other retailers compete with Amazon on Prime Day?

Traditionally, as Amazon’s Prime Day sale approaches, other retailers adjust their prices by offering summer deals or getting creative with offers. However, we did not see aggressive strategies from other retailers this year. In the US, Walmart always has a sale during Amazon’s Prime Day. The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart announced there wouldn’t be an annual promotional event on Prime Day 2022 this year.

Another report published by Forrester stated that major retailers scaled back their promotions, and overall offers from other retailers were less than impressive. We took a look at the data we gathered in the UK to see if this trend aligned.

Discounts offered on Prime Day on Amazon v/s other retailers
- Our data showed that most retailers we tracked offered negligible discounts (in the range of 0.1 – 1.5%) and did not really try and compete or match the discounts Amazon was offering.
- However, ASOS was the one retailer that competed heavily with Amazon in the Fashion & Beauty category. While Amazon offered an average additional discount of 7.7% in the Fashion category, ASOS offered 13.2%. And in the beauty category, Amazon offered 6.7%, while ASOS offered 15.2%.
- When we looked at post-prime day discounts, we saw that as soon as Prime Day ended, ASOS went back to the original price and stopped offering a discount which clearly shows they were keeping an active eye on out their competitors pricing. In fact, ASOS was offering up to 80% off almost everything on the site until Prime Day.
Which were the popular categories that offered the most discounts?

During Prime Day, shoppers saw tons of deals on essential gadgets. Tech deals were a massive hit and saw big discounts on everything from TVs, laptops, smartwatches, phones, and tablets. We look at the data we collected to see if we saw a similar trend.

Discounts on Amazon UK across categories
- Amazon offered discounts across categories and reported that some of the best-selling categories were Consumer Electronics & Home.
- Our data too showed that the highest additional discounts were offered in electronics – Bluetooth Earphones at 18.4%, followed by Smartwatches at 14.9% and Laptops as well as Cameras, both at 12%.
- Low discounts were offered on Alcohol, with Beer at 0.9% and Wine at 1.3%, respectively.
- Relatively attractive discounts were seen in the Fashion & Beauty category – Sunglasses (9.1%), Shampoo (9.7%), & Watches (9.4%)
Discounts on Amazon UK in the Electronics category

Electronics being the hot favorite – we wanted to deep dive into the data and get more insights on Amazon’s pricing & discounting strategy here. Discounts can entice customers to buy more, encourage customer loyalty, or clear out old inventory. However, businesses must be careful since too much discounting can eat into profits. They also have to be mindful of which products should be discounted and by how much.
- Our data showed that the highest discounts (between 13 – 18%) were given on electronics priced between the £ 20-100 price range.
- Electronics priced higher, between the £ 100 – 500 pound price range, were discounted less than 10%
- However, high-value premium electronics over £ 500 were discounted slightly above 10%
How did Amazon manage stock availability during Prime Day?

Keeping track of inventory is especially important during big sales like Prime Day when thousands of customers are actively looking for deals. There’s nothing worse than them finding the item they wanted is out of stock (OOS). OOS leads to lost sales, a situation that must be avoided at all costs. Read about how a small short term stock out on Amazon led to long term negative impacts for one of our customers. And let’s also look at the data and see what product availability looked like on Prime Day.
- Overall, Amazon maintained robust availability across categories, and re-stocking was constant both before, during & after the event.
- Furniture, Fashion & Electronics had the highest availability. No surprise there since Amazon estimated that Home/ Furniture would be one of the best-selling categories.
- Grocery saw average availability – perhaps cause some of these products are perishables, so it’s best to be mindful about overstocking.
Which Brands Won on Prime Day?

If there is one thing to remember about improving your product visibility on Amazon, it’s that it all boils down to the usage of the right keywords. Using relevant keywords makes your product appear higher up in search when customers are running searches on Amazon for those products. And the higher up a product appears in search, the higher the chances of a sale!

Let’s take a look at some popular categories and which brands had the highest Share of Search (SoS) during Prime Day.
- Corona, San Miguel, and Becks were the top 3 brands optimized for the keyword Beer. However, what’s really important to note is both Corona & Becks had 20% SoS that was completely organic. San Miguel had a 20% SoS too, but it was sponsored ads that gave them this artificial boost.
- While a whole bunch of other brands had a 10% SoS most of them achieved this via Sponsored Ads. Youngever was the only brand that achieved this completely organically. They must have made sure they optimized key KPIs like content, ratings & reviews & product availability to achieve this result.
- There were deep discounts on a wide range of Lenovo laptops. For example, the Lenovo IdeaPad duet Chromebook and Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3 Chromebook were available at £100 off. Our data, too saw Lenovo & Asus fight for the top spot.
- Asus sponsored 28% of products before Prime Day, hoping to capitalize on the pre-sale frenzy. During the event, they sponsored only 13% of products, bringing down their total SoS from 31% before the event to 13% during the event.
- Lenovo followed the opposite strategy; they sponsored just 6% of products before the event and during the event sponsored a whopping 25% which made them “almost” dominate the Laptop category during Prime Day.
- Then there was Microsoft, with the highest SoS at 38%, of which all of it was organic!
- The Smartphone SoS battle was clearly between Samsung & Xiaomi. Samsung was a consistent #1 at all 3 time periods (Before, During & After Prime Day) with the highest total SoS. Xiaomi came in at a close second.
- Samsung had an exciting strategy – they went heavy on sponsorships before and after the event. Their sponsored SoS was 31% & 39% respectively. And SoS of 13% during the event.
- Xiaomi’s strategy was just the opposite. Their sponsored SoS was 16% before the event. And 17% after the event, which was moderate compared to their Sponsored SoS during the event at 25%, which was much higher than Samsung’s 13%
- Critical to note, Xiaomi’s organic search visibility before, during, and after the event was 0%. It definitely should be a concern area for any brand.
Share of search
- Both before & after the event, Cadbury had the highest visibility for the keyword Chocolate. During the event, they were not in the top 5 brands.
- During Prime Day, Nestle won the top spot and had a 29% SoS. However, before the event, they were at #3 and after at #2. Artificially boosting visibility might’ve had something to do with this.
Conclusion

Prime Day sales reached an estimated 12 billion U.S. dollars worldwide, 9.8% higher than last year, making it the most successful shopping event in Amazon’s history. If you’re a brand selling on Amazon or a retailer trying to compete with Amazon, reach out to us at DataWeave to know how we can help!
August 4, 2022
UK Grocery Pricing Wars in 2022! A quick look at Pricing Data we gathered from 5 Grocery retailers in the UK
Grocery sales in the UK are dominated by the “big four” – Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, and Morrisons. A Statista report on these Grocery Giants as of May 2022 indicates that Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda own approximately 27%, 15%, and 13% market share of grocery stores in the UK. Whereas Ocado and Symbols & Independent have the lowest market share, 1.8% each.

However, the grocery delivery market is seeing a major shift because of new-age Quick Commerce companies that have swooped into the already crowded grocery space offering super-speedy home delivery! These new entrants added to the already competitive Grocery market & price wars intensified. Customers today rely on ultra-fast delivery services for their grocery requirements. For example, Berlin-based Gorillas charges £1.80 to deliver anything from a £7 pizza to a 30p apple — with no minimum order value.

Investors funded over £5B in grocery delivery apps such as Getir, Gorillas, Zapp, Fancy, Dija, Weezy, Jiffy, and Beelivery, in the UK. These rapid grocery delivery apps offer shorter delivery times, as low as 10 minutes, along with deep discounts to attract customers. For example, Gorillas, Weezy, and Getir all claim a 10-minute delivery time and offer promotional codes for the first couple of orders. Customers also get discounts for inviting friends and family.

To get more insight into the Grocery space in the UK, we tracked 5 Grocery retailers & Q-Commerce companies to try and understand trends wrt pricing in this competitive environment. Let’s take a look at what our data found & which retailer won the competitive pricing tug of war.

Methodology
- Data Scrape time period: January 2022 – June 2022
- Grocery Retailers tracked: Tesco & Ocado
- Grocery Apps tracked: Gorillas, Weezy & Getir
- Categories tracked: Alcohol, Drinks & Beverages, Fresh & Frozen, Grocery, Health & Wellness, Home Care, Packed Food & Snacks, and Smoke shop.
Grocery Giants v/s Grocery Delivery apps – who was the Price Leader?

Price leadership by category

Price leadership across months by Retailer

We wanted to track and see which retailer was the Price Leader – i.e., had the most number of lower-priced items in a particular category. Our data clearly showed that the Grocery Giants Ocado & Tesco won hands down! Interestingly, Ocado launched a new Ad Campaign earlier in Jan this year about bringing value to the table for customers with quality products at affordable prices – seems like they’re taking this new promise very seriously!
- Tesco and Ocado were price leaders in maximum categories when compared to Gorillas, Weezy, and Getir.
- Between Tesco & Ocado, Ocado enjoyed price leadership across all these categories for 4 out of the 6 months we tracked pricing for. Tesco occupied the top slot for just the balance 2 months.
- Tesco was the price leader in the Alcohol category, with close to 40% of products priced the lowest compared to other retailers. They were also price leaders in the Smoke Shop category.
- Ocado won price leadership for the remaining 6 categories, with a marginal gap between both retailers.
Watching Price Index Trends as inflation soars!

Price index across months by Retailer

The Guardian reports that Grocery inflation has hit a 13-year high in the UK, and food price rises could hit 15% by this summer – the highest level in more than 20 years. Meats, cereals, dairy, fruit & vegetables are likely to be the worst affected. Keeping this in mind, we tracked the Price Index (PI) across these 5 retailers to measure how prices changed over a 6 month period from Jan – June 2022.

Note: Retailers selling at the 100% mark were selling at an optimal price & did not undercut the market. The pricing sweet spot is 95% – 105%. Anything lower would compromise margins, and higher would mean the retailer was not competitive.
- Getir & Ocado had a Price Index that was the most optimal, sitting in the 95% – 105% range.
- Gorillas had the lowest Price Index, between 88% – 90%.
- Weezy has the highest Price Index – they were selling at a minimum 30% – 40% premium over other retailers! Perhaps it’s their quick delivery service that justified these super high prices? Unlike other apps with a lower delivery fee but longer delivery times, Weezy offers a 15-minute delivery service & customers seem to be willing to pay for convenience! Wheezy also has a delivery fee of £2.95, which is at least £1 more than other platforms.
  Supermarkets like Ocado are now playing catch up to compete with Q-Commerce and quick delivery services. Ocado has launched a new “Zoom” service promising delivery in 60 minutes, and Amazon is now delivering “same day” groceries (but both have a minimum spend of £15)
Which Retailers were the quickest to make price changes?

Average price change across months by Retailer

Competitive pricing is critical to winning the eCommerce race. Competitive pricing involves tracking your competitor’s pricing & strategically tweaking your own prices without hurting margins. We tracked the month-wise average Price change from Jan – June across all 5 retailers to see which retailer was making price changes and at what frequency.
- The main observation was – across all 6 months, all retailers were likely tracking each other’s prices and making minor price changes accordingly – the need of the hour in this hyper-competitive environment.
- Gorillas made significant changes to prices between Jan & Feb. And Getir in the May/ June time period.
Discounts & Promos in a turbulent UK Grocery Market

Average discount across months by Retailer

Although customer acquisition starts with building awareness, discounts are a proven way to attract customers quickly. When approached with the right strategy, promotional discounts can promote long-term customer loyalty, drive customer acquisition, and improve customer lifetime value. However, deep discounting can risk margins and create more problems than benefits. We wanted an insight into discounting trends in the Grocery space, so we looked at our data. Here’s what we saw:
- Getir offered by far the highest discounts compared to Ocado & Gorillas. In fact, in most cases, they offered discounts close to 2-3% higher than the retailer with the 2nd highest discounts!
- Our data showed that Gorillas offered the lowest discounts. As reported in The Sun & other sources, newer Q-Commerce players like Gorillas have been showering users with discount codes, and that is why this data surprised us!
We went & looked back at the Price Index earlier in this blog, we noticed that Gorillas had a low price index overall, with most products priced at a 90%, way below other retailers. Perhaps this already lower price is why they’re offered very few discounts?

Conclusion

The UK grocery delivery market saw a huge rise in new retailers who are currently fighting for better discounts, competitive prices, and quick delivery. Although Tesco and Ocado were the price leaders in our findings, new players like Gorillas, Weezy, and Getir are attracting customers with quicker delivery times and low delivery costs.
July 24, 2022
The Role of eCommerce in Sustainable Fashion

Today, environmental damage is rapidly occurring on a global scale. And there are many reasons and causes for this. Global warming is one, deforestation, over population are some others. The list is long. In a small way, the retail & clothing industry contributes to environmental damage too. The good news is that sustainable fashion addresses this issue. Sustainable clothing is designed using sustainable fabrics like organic cotton, hemp, and Pima cotton that have less of a negative impact on the planet.

Sustainable clothing and its benefits

In this blog, we will discuss the rise of sustainable clothing and its benefits. We will also discuss marketplaces for sustainable fashion.

Benefits of Sustainable Fashion

a. Reduces carbon footprint

The fashion industry emits numerous greenhouse gases annually. Most clothes are made from fossil fuels and require significantly more energy in production. Sustainable brands often use natural or recycled fabrics that require less chemical treatment, water, and energy. Organic fabrics such as linen, hemp, and organic cotton are biodegradable and environmentally sound.

b. Saves animal lives

Leather isn’t a by-product of the meat industry, and it’s estimated that it alone is slaughtering and killing over 430 million animals annually. Sustainable fashion brands are increasingly embracing the use of cruelty-free alternatives. Various alternatives include polyester made with ocean trash, plant-based compostable sneakers, bags from recycled seatbelts, silk created from yeast, and bio-fabricated vegan wool. Another interesting leather alternative comes from pineapples, where the fabric is produced using the leaves of pineapples.

c. Requires less water

Water is used in the dyeing and finishing process for nearly all items in the fashion industry. It takes 2,700 liters of water to produce a single T-shirt. Cotton is highly dependent on water but is usually grown in hot and dry areas. Linen, hemp, Refibra, and recycled fibers are some other sustainable fabrics that require little to no water during production.

d. Supports safer working conditions

Endless working hours, unacceptable health & safety conditions, and minimum wages, are the reality for most garment workers in the fast fashion sector. A few informative documentaries like “The True Cost” or “Fashion Factories Undercover” document the social injustices of the fast fashion industry. Eco-ethical brands advocate for sustainable fashion, health care, humane working conditions, and fair wages for their workers.

e. Healthy for people and the environment

Fast fashion products often undergo an intense chemical process where 8,000 types of chemicals are used to bleach, dye, and wet process garments. Those chemicals often lead to diseases or fatal accidents for workers and inflict serious congenital disabilities on their children. These chemicals harm our health, as our skin absorbs anything we put on it.

5 Sustainable & Ethical Online Marketplaces

Here is a list of five earth-minded and socially responsible marketplaces that have sustainable and fair trade brands for the discerning and mindful shopper:

1. thegreenlabels

Netherlands-based webshop thegreenlabels is a sustainable fashion retailer that sells sneakers, womenswear, and accessories from various “green labels” brands. Founded in 2018, this is a marketplace where people can buy products from brands that care about a positive impact on the environment. All brands featured here guarantee fair working conditions and represent at least one of these 4 values – “CLEAN PROCESS” environmentally friendly production, clothes that support “LOCAL” communities, “VEGAN” brands to assure no animals were harmed and “WASTE REDUCTION”

2. LVRSustainable

LVRSustainable

Luisa Via Roma started as a family-owned boutique in the early 1900s. They have grown into a luxury e-retailer and created an LVRSustainable section for people trying to insert sustainability into their wardrobes. They have brands rated ‘Good’ or ‘Great.’ The site offers a wide range of products like bags, accessories, sports, shoes, lingerie, and much more for men, women, and kids. You can find organic, vegan, eco-friendly, ethical, and recycled & upcycled items here.

3. Brothers We Stand

Brothers We Stand

Brothers We Stand is a retailer set up in solidarity with the people who make our clothes. This retailer conducts rigorous research to ensure that every product in their collection meets the following three standards: designed to please, ethical production, and created to last. It’s a great platform to shop for ethical and sustainable menswear. They also have their private clothing line along with other brands.

4. Labell-D

Labell-D was launched with a clear mission to reduce the negative impact of fast fashion on the planet. This retailer wants to make Responsible Fashion the new norm. They intend to make sustainable clothing and fashion easy for both brands and consumers. Labell-D has a transparent accreditation process where they evaluate the brand’s carbon footprint and environmental impact. Their verification assessment includes animal welfare, emissions, materials, production processes, chemical usage, waste management, and traceability.

5. Cerqular

Cerqular wants to make sustainable shopping affordable and accessible for all. The retailer promises that every product and seller is verified as organic, recycled, sustainable, carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, vegan, or circular. They have a wide range of sellers and do not limit products only from luxury brands, so sustainable shopping is no longer expensive or inconvenient.

Conclusion

The fashion industry is a contributor to worldwide carbon emissions. Sustainable fashion is the new big thing giving rise to more and more sustainable brands and marketplaces.

To stand out and shine in the crowded eCommerce space is not easy. Having a robust Digital Shelf becomes critical for brands. A brand’s Digital Shelf is all of the ways their customers digitally interact with the brand, not only on marketplaces but on the brand’s DTC website & shoppable social media. This is why brands need to closely track & optimize their Digital Shelf KPIs like assortment, availability, pricing, ratings & reviews, product discoverability & product content to increase their online sales.

Want to learn how DataWeave can help you win the Digital Shelf? Sign up for a demo with our team to know more.

July 18, 2022
U.S. Prime Day Deals 2022: Promotion Intelligence First Look

As inflation hits another 40-year high at 9.1 percent, U.S. consumers geared up for their first sign of hope and relief in the form of anticipated discount buys – 2022 Amazon Prime Days, or so we thought. While Prime Days have grown to become a promotional period almost as important as Black Friday to digital shoppers, the combination of economic uncertainty, inflationary pressures, and supply chain challenges seemed to alter the discount strategy expected given activity seen during 2021 Prime Days.

Our analyst team has been hard at work aiming to provide a ‘first look’ at 2022 Prime Day Promotional Insights, tracking discounts offered across 46,000+ SKUs within key categories like Electronics, Clothing, Health & Beauty and Home, on seven major retailer websites – Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Sephora, Ulta, Lowe’s and Home Depot. Our analysis compares prices seen during Amazon Prime Day 2022 on July 12^th, to pre-Prime Day maximum value prices seen in the ten days leading up to Prime Days, to determine the average change in discounts offered during the promotional period. Below is a summary of our findings.

Competitive Promotions Give Amazon a Run for their Money

Amazon offered the greatest average discount enhancements for Electronics at 5.6 percent followed by Health & Beauty items at 5.1 percent, and Home products at 4.2 percent versus pre-Prime Day discounts seen across the categories considered within our analysis. The only category reviewed where average discounts were greater on a competitor’s website was on Target.com within the Clothing category. As seen below, Clothing on Target.com average discounts were 6.8 percent greater than pre-Prime Day offers, which was 2.6 percent higher than the average discounts offered for Clothing on Amazon.

Target Capitalizes on Growth Opportunity in Clothing Category

Diving deeper into the details of where Target won within the Clothing category, you can see a majority of their promotional activity took place within Women’s Accessories where discounts offered were 18.5 percent greater than those seen pre-Prime Day 2022, which was almost 15 percent greater than the discount enhancements seen on Amazon for Women’s Accessories. In fact, Women’s Shoes and Sneakers were the only two categories where the average discounts offered were greater on Amazon than on Target.com.

Overall, the discounts offered on Target.com within the Clothing category were primarily concentrated within items priced $40 and lower, but what was most interesting is that within the $10 and under price bucket, Target offered average discounts of over 11 percent whereas Amazon increased prices for these items on average by over 9 percent.

While most of the Clothing available on both Amazon and Target.com during Prime Days 2022 were offered without a price change, the greatest discount percentages tracked were within the range of 10-25 percent off on Amazon whereas Target chose to offer the bulk of their promotions at 25 percent off an up.

Strategic Promotional Strategies Defined at the Electronics Subcategory Level

When it comes to the Electronics category on Prime Day, the big question is always who will win the battle of the brands. Below shows the difference in average pricing and promotions discounts offered between products manufactured by Samsung versus Apple across each retailer platform, noting discounts were almost 3 percent greater on average for Apple versus Samsung products on Amazon, and Apple discounts were almost 5 percent greater on Amazon versus than those seen on Target.com.

Amazon wasn’t going all in on Apple however, as we saw ‘Alexa’ devices (Amazon products) available on Best Buy and Target websites also, but the discounts were almost 4 percent greater on Amazon versus Target and over 7 percent greater than the discounts seen on BestBuy.com.

While the average discounts offered within the Electronics category were greatest on Amazon (5.6 percent) versus Best Buy (3.9 percent) and Target (3.4 percent) as noted within the first chart of this blog and across brands and technologies considered above, the discounts offered on Amazon were strategically focused between 10-25 percent as seen below.

Amazon’s Electronics promotions were also targeted at smaller price points, items priced between $20-500, whereas Best Buy and Target offered greater promotions for electronics priced $500 and up than Amazon.

Below is a snapshot of price buckets tracked for Electronics available on BestBuy.com, highlighting where most of the promotional activity was targeted at products priced $50 and up during Prime Days 2022, with discounts ranging from 10 percent up to greater than 25 percent greater than pre-Prime day prices.

The standout categories were TVs on Target.com with discounts averaging nearly 12 percent greater than those seen pre-Prime day, and smartphones on BestBuy.com with discounts averaging just over 11 percent greater than those seen pre-Prime Day. The category with the greatest average discount enhancements seen on Amazon during Prime Days 2022 was for Wireless Headphones with an average discount of 8.7 percent.

Home is Where Amazon’s Heart Was on Prime Day

Amazon dominated offers within the Home categories, especially for products within mid ($40-100) and higher price ranges (items priced $200-500), with the bulk of the discounts offered between 10-25 percent. There was little to no promotional activity seen across all price points on Lowe’s or Home Depot’s websites within the categories we tracked, and most other competitive offers on Home products were seen on BestBuy.com for products priced from $50-500. Even a subcategory like Tools offered deeper average discounts on Amazon (4.7 percent) than discounts seen on HomeDepot.com (1.1 percent) or Lowes.com (0 percent).

For Large Appliances, Amazon was the only retailer to off any significant discount across each major subcategory with the greatest average discount being on Ovens at 6 percent, followed by Refrigerators at 4 percent. One caveat with this category, when we reviewed Large Appliance prices two weeks prior to Prime Days, we saw average price increases around 16.7 percent occurring on Amazon.

During Prime Days 2022 however, Amazon also offered top average discounts for small appliances, except for on Instant Pots which appeared to have greater average discounts on Target.com (5.9 percent versus 4.2 percent on Amazon), and Vacuum Cleaners which appeared to have the best promotion of appliances small and large at 13.8 percent average discount on BestBuy.com. Another subcategory deeply discounted on BestBuy.com was weighted blankets, which averaged discounts around 18.5 percent versus Amazon’s average discount at only 6.2 percent.

Health & Beauty Retailer Pricing Strategies Revealed

Given the importance Health & Beauty Brands placed on Prime Day sales last year, we had anticipated to see more offers, especially within pure-play beauty retail channels, than we did for this booming category.

Amazon drove most of the Health & Beauty offers seen averaging 5.1% discounts versus other retailers only offering less than 1% on average, but discounts were aimed at a targeted group of SKUs on Amazon, bringing the average discount lower overall. Most of the promotions offered on Amazon fell within mid-range price points ($20-50) and were discounted between 10-25 percent versus pre-Prime Day prices.

Target.com offered the most comparable discounts to Amazon for Health & Beauty products on average, but their strategy primarily focused on items within the $20 and lower price range with discounts ranging primarily between 10-25 percent.

More 2022 Prime Day Insights Coming Soon

We know the significance visibility to critical pricing and promotional insights play in enabling retailers and brands to offer the right discounts to stay competitive, especially during promotional periods like Prime Days. While this blog is intended to provide a ‘sneak peek’ into 2022 Prime Day insights for the U.S. market, we will be providing more extensive, global coverage and will proactively share new insights with the marketplace as they become available throughout the month of July.

Be sure to also check out our Press page for access to the latest media coverage on Prime Day insights and more. Don’t hesitate to reach out to our team if there is any particular category you are interested in seeing in more detail, or for access to more information on our Commerce Intelligence and Digital Shelf solutions.

July 14, 2022
The challenges in scaling a ‘House of Brands’
Let’s start with the basics – what is a ‘House of Brands.’

House of Brands is a portfolio management strategy that defines how a family of brands owned by one parent company, each independent of one another and each with its own audience, marketing, look & feel operate in harmony with each other.

Advantages of a House of Brands Strategy
- The Profit Playbook: The playbook generated by the success of one brand can be leveraged to scale other brands.
- Economies of Scale: Cost across Marketing, Supply chain, Advertising, and Operations gets shared across multiple brands helping optimize costs.
- Market Coverage: Multiple products enable brands to cover multiple market niches and audiences while maintaining unique messaging for each niche.
- Future-Proofing: By hedging bets across multiple brands, it cushions the parent company against changes in customer preferences and trends.
… for these reasons and more, it’s no surprise that every digital-first consumer brand today aspires to leverage a portfolio strategy to become a House of Brands.

More and more companies are slowly adopting this strategy
- In the US the brands like P&G, Newell, and Unilever which found early success in the online space are quickly acquiring more brands and betting on the “House of Brands” strategy to scale.
- In India, Unicorn D2C start-ups like MamaEarth, Good Glamm Group, Sugar Cosmetics, Rebel, Boat, and Lenskart to name a few, are already knee-deep into this strategy as their brand portfolio keeps growing.
- And then there are brand roll-ups like Thrasio, Perch, HeyDay in the USA, Branded, Hero in the UK and Mensa, and GlobalBees in India which started as a House of Brands from the get-go.
More Brands. More Data. More need for Monitoring!

You cannot improve what you cannot measure! In order to scale these brands, the first thing needed is DATA. Data across all digital platforms – data on social media performance, customer engagement, eCommerce sales, product stock availability, pricing, reviews, and customer sentiment to name a few. This data will unlock huge value for brands and it gives them a sense of what’s working and what needs to be improved in order to increase sales & scale.

All brands need to track this information – but here’s a challenge unique to a House of Brands – it is the sheer volume & scale of data needed across multiple brands across multiple digital platforms! For example, a House of Brands with let’s say 10+ brands, each brand with 50 SKUs, selling on 10 eCommerce platforms is the equivalent of managing 10 retail shops with 500 SKUs!

Let’s look at some of the questions the analytics, marketing, and brand management teams at House Of Brands would ask. And the data they would need almost on a daily basis for every single brand.
- What is the search ranking for all of our SKUs across each and every single eCommerce store it is available on? How does this benchmark to the closest competitor? And are competitors using aggressive advertising strategies to outperform & overshadow our SKUs?
- Are competitors offering discounts? Are those discounts higher than what we’re offering leading customers to purchase their products instead of ours?
- Are my products & SKUs available and not out of stock across every single marketplace and online store?
- Are positive ratings & reviews driving my customers to purchase my product? Or do our competitors have a better customer perception than my brand does?
- Are Amazon and other marketplaces displaying my product content correctly so customers have enough information to make an informed purchase decision?
… if the sheer scale across multiple brands was not a big enough challenge when this data needs to be tracked hyper-locally for each brand, it becomes anyone’s worst data nightmare!

Need Data? Lots of it? No problem!

To get ample data, across key KPIs brands need to invest in a Digital Shelf Solution. However, traditional Digital Shelf Solutions were built for brands that got a majority of their revenue from in-store sales and only a part of their revenue was being generated online.

That’s where DataWeave is different. DataWeave’s AI-Powered Digital Shelf Solutions was built with Digital Native brands in mind.

What KPIs do we help House of Brands track?
- Keyword Search Ranking: Track & improve your search rankings for priority keywords. Boost product visibility and sales
Keyword Analysis
- Content: Optimize your brand’s product content to drive up conversions
Content Quality Analysis
- Pricing & Discounts: Analyze your rivals pricing moves to stay competitive
- Stock Availability: Make sure that your products are never out of stock again
Availability Analysis
- Ratings & Reviews: Adapt to customer sentiments & strengthen your product reviews
The following metrics are available to view in one single dashboard, across multiple online stores and multiple geographies making it so easy to get a consolidated view of the health of the entire portfolio of products! What’s more, we’ve created a dashboard with multiple views – brand-wise, function-wise & even hierarchy-wise. This means a brand manager can see all KPIs specific for only the brand they manage, while the marketing team can look at keyword search rankings across all brands and the leadership team can see a brand-level daily scorecard for a quick health check. And that’s not all! Our dashboard highlights insights that can be “actioned asap” to make it easier to understand what critical tweaks and changes can help improve sales. Lastly, as a House of Brands adds more Brands & SKUs to its portfolio, our solution has the full flexibility to add and delete SKUs on the go!

If you are a House of Brand and wish to explore how some of the problems you face daily can be solved – please email: contact@dataweave.com.

Brand Roll-Ups and House of Brands are always scouting for new brands to acquire. DataWeave has a unique product to help you track a category daily, highlighting brands that show exceptional KPIs across – Ranking, Reviews, Ratings, Bestseller ranks, Sales Estimates, etc. Read more about how VC’s & Brand Rolls up are using Data for faster Acquisitions.
July 6, 2022
How short term Stockouts on Amazon can have a long-term impact on your eCommerce business
It’s common knowledge that upward of 70% of Amazon customers never scroll past the first page of search results. And that the first 3 products garner 64% of business generated. This is why it is critical for brands and businesses to make sure they rank well on Amazon. A good search ranking helps customers find your product with ease. And findability is fundamental! Having a better ranking is also a driver of the “flywheel effect” at online retailers. According to this effect, products that sell more tend to rank better in search results, and products that rank well in search results tend to sell more.

Negative impact on Sales Ranking due to Stockouts

If you want to stay on top of search rankings on Amazon, one of the things you need to keep an eye out for is your product stock availability. It’s not the ideal customer experience to have to click on a product listing only to find out it’s currently out of stock. This is why Amazon will not rank products at the top if they’re not available & customers cannot buy them immediately. Not only does this lead to a lost sale for a brand, to make things worse, but customers also end up buying a competitor’s product instead.

We were tracking product availability on Amazon for one of our customers in the CPG space. We tracked availability for products across varying ranks & looked at how going out of stock impacted their search rankings.

Product Availability

Impact on products with a Search Rank between 1 to 10:
- Our data showed that when products that ranked between 1-10 went out of stock for just 1 day, their rank fell by over 28%. After 3+ days of being out of stock, their rank fell by 83% and after being out of stock for over 10 days their rank fell by close to 150%!
- This clearly illustrates that when the longer top-ranking products are out of stock, the greater the impact on search rank and product discoverability.
Impact on products with a Search Rank between 10 to 20:
- The impact of being out of stock on products that ranked lower, i.e. between 10 to 20 was much lower. After being stocked out for 1 day, the ranking fell 17% compared to the 28% dip for products in the top 10 ranks.
- Incremental change was minimal, too. After 3+ days of being OOS, search rank dropped by 22% and by 53% after 10+ days v/s close to 150% for higher-ranked products.
Impact on products with a Search Rank between 20 to 30:
- These products had the least impact but there was an impact nonetheless.
- After being OOS for 5+ days, search ranking fell by close to 8% and to close to 30% after 10 days of product unavailability.
Avoiding Stockouts with better Inventory Management

Customers can buy your product only when it is available. Failing to provide products at the right time will lead to losing sales to your competitors. If your products become unavailable, you’ll notice a drop in customers’ overall satisfaction and shopping experience too in addition to a lost sales rank on Amazon. In fact, your reputation and sales will take a beating long term in case of consistent product unavailability. Moreover, once the product is back in stock, the climb back to the top ranking is a slow and not-so-easy process. This is why brands need to maximize conversions by tracking product availability on a constant basis.

Conclusion

Stockout is a critical issue that has a significant impact on sales, brand image, and customer loyalty. Items ranking higher on eCommerce platforms take the biggest hit when they get out of stock. Brands can recapture their search share after restocking their inventory.

Want to maximize sales by reducing latency periods between stock replenishment? Reach out to our Digital Shelf Experts to know how!
June 30, 2022
Feminine Hygiene Products Face Supply Chain Shortage and Price Increases

Last week the DataWeave analytics team identified the states most impacted by the baby formula shortage, only to see feminine hygiene products following similar trends with price increases occurring alongside a supply chain shortage. In this analysis, the team has identified over four hundred feminine hygiene products made available across eighteen retailer and delivery intermediary websites from August 2021 through June 2022, to see how product availability and price changes correlated.

Within the feminine care products analyzed, both tampons and sanitary pads show to have under 58% availability as of June 2022. For sanitary pads, June 2022 shows the lowest level of product availability at around 58%, which has steadily declined each month from August 2021 where product availability started around 69%. Tampons however, reached their lowest level of availability in April 2022 at 45%, and appear to be slowly recovering each month, now reaching around 53% availability in June 2022.

Product Availability for Feminine Care Products – June 2022

The Evolution of the Tampon Shortage by Retailer

Looking at tampons in more detail and at a retail level, we can see how much and how often product availability fluctuated from August 2021 through June 2022 across Kroger, Meijer, Baker’s Plus, Target and Walmart websites. Baker’s Plus, for example, shows the lowest product availability, maintaining an average of around 39% from October 2021 through June 2022. Kroger appears to be a notable exception only facing stock availability issues in March and April 2022, achieving nearly 78% availability in June 2022, which is 16% greater than the other retailers analyzed.

Product Availability for Tampons by Retailer – June 2022

Feminine Care Product Price Changes Over Time

When looking at Pricing Intelligence insights and average price changes occurring alongside declining product availability for tampons and sanitary pads combined, we see a very different story. Tampons have seen steep price hikes from December 2021 onward, increasing the most in June 2022, up 6% compared to prices seen in November 2021. This steep price increase could be attributed to consistently low availability for tampons that has been seen in recent months.

To the contrary, sanitary pads have seen a price reduction of around 1.25% as of June 2022 compared to average prices seen in November 2021. While prices are lower in June 2022 for sanitary pads, the percentage by which they are lower is shrinking in recent months, potentially for the same reasons related to decreasing product availability.

Price Change for Feminine Care Products – June 2022

When looking at month-over-month average price changes for tampons only, we can clearly identify which months had the biggest price changes, noting price hikes that lead to the currently high prices seen in June 2022. In March and May 2022, over 10% of tampons offered had seen a price increase, and around 8% had seen significant price increases of more than 10%.

Month-Over-Month Price Changes for Tampons – June 2022

eCommerce Intelligence Provides Early Visibility to Evolving Trends

Price increases don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon given there was a 3.6% price hike seen on average in May 2022 versus April, with June seeing yet another .6% increase from May’s prices. That being said, as the market evolves and feminine hygiene products stabilize, our team will continue to provide visibility to critical pricing and product availability changes to enable our clients to stay ahead of the curve.

From a baby formula shortage to a tampon shortage, what category will be next to follow the supply chain shortage trend? Follow our blog for access to the latest insights and be sure to reach out to our team if there is any particular category you are interested in tracking next, or for access to more information on our Commerce Intelligence and Digital Shelf solutions.

June 22, 2022
7 Key Metrics that QSRs want (but may not get) from Food Delivery Apps

The Quick Service Restaurant market is projected to be valued at $691 billion by 2022. As the QSR industry grows and the market becomes even more competitive, restaurant chains continuously seek ways to increase sales via food aggregators to market their business. To improve ROI and sales, having data and insights into key metrics could help QSRs to boost their success rate.

QSRs would like to know how they stack up against their competition regarding discoverability on cluttered food aggregator apps. Restaurants want to know the gaps in their product assortment to understand what drives customers to their competitors. Getting insights into delivery time and competitors’ delivery fees will help QSR improve delivery ETAs and optimize fees. They can also set competitive pricing with insights into their competitors’ pricing. In addition, they can use data to optimize their ad spending on food apps and improve marketing ROI.

In this blog, we will discuss the relationship between QSRs and food aggregators and how getting data about key metrics from these food delivery platforms can help QSRs scale their revenue.

Data: The Key Ingredient to increasing sales

According to Statista, online food ordering revenue is expected to grow at a robust CAGR of 10.39% between 2021 and 2025. Food Aggregators apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and GrubHub offer convenient meal delivery options from various QSRs within a single app. Food aggregators provide a multitude of benefits for QSRs. They give access to a huge customer base, quick delivery, and an easy entry into quick commerce, helping QSRs increase visibility. Although QSRs rely on food aggregator platforms for hassle-free ordering, tracking, and delivery, they can’t always rely on them to share critical data that could help them optimize their operations & increase sales.

Online food ordering revenue

1. Data on Product Assortment

QSRs need assortment insights to understand their competitor’s menu assortment. Assortment analytics plays a crucial role in ensuring that QSRs aren’t losing sales because their competitors are offering cuisines and dishes that they aren’t. Understanding gaps in menus helps QSRs to better plan their menu. However, food aggregator apps can’t share competitors’ assortment data with QSRs for a multitude of reasons, guidelines, and privacy laws. Thankfully, at DataWeave, our QSR intelligence solution can! We help restaurants improve their assortment by sharing insights into the dishes and cuisines their competitors’ have on display.

Menu Assortment

2. Data on QSR Discoverability

QSRs would love to know how to increase discoverability on food aggregators, as it will help them to appear ahead in search results and beat the competition. Improving visibility on these apps directly impacts sales and drives more orders for restaurants. Some aggregators offer discoverability information but give it on demand, usually after 20-30 days, making it irrelevant due to the enormous time gap. They also don’t provide information about the change in the discoverability of your competition. All these data points are so critical, and understandably so, Food Apps can’t share this level of information with restaurants. However, DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence solution can! It provides real-time discoverability insights into your restaurant and competitor’s visibility so that the data is actionable, and QSRs can use insights to improve visibility.

Read how DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence helped an American QSR Chain and how their ranking on search results page on Ube rEats, DoorDash & Grubhub impacted outlet discoverability & sales!

3. Data on Pricing & Promotions

Pricing a QSR’s menu is tricky. If you price too high, you’ll turn off new customers. If you price too low, you’ll cut margins & may even come off as low-qualify. Customer Price Perception is greatly influenced by the Price-Quality relationship. To add to this, restaurants are often up against stiff competition from restaurants with similar cuisine offerings so it’s critical that prices are competitive. Understanding competitor pricing doesn’t imply that you have to beat their prices. You can compensate for any price differences by offering higher quality cuisines, better customer service, and quicker delivery. Once again, food apps can’t share competitors’ pricing data with QSRs. But DataWeave’s QSR & Pricing Intelligence solution can! QSRs can use these insights to drive more revenue & margins by pricing their menu right.

4. Data on Delivery Time

QSRs must be able to deliver hot meals, in a timely manner to customers because customers want to quickly dig into the delicious food they ordered. Quicker deliveries within the ETA will also help earn the trust and loyalty of customers. However, food aggregators don’t share information on the delivery times with restaurants – not their own delivery time or their competitors. DataWeave can help QSRs to understand their peak hours and optimize their service to ensure quick ETAs. They can also get detailed insights into competitors’ delivery times to make sure they’re competitive. This is important because customers will often pick restaurants with quicker ETAs.

Read how DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence helped an American QSR Chain understand the correlation between delivery time & sales volumes

Delivery time trend by urbanity

5. Data on Delivery Fee

As a thumb rule, customers will always compare delivery fees across apps. They’re conscious of delivery dollars included in their bill and often choose a restaurant with lesser delivery fees. This makes it even more critical for restaurants to understand how they stack up against their competitors. Understanding competitors’ delivery fees could potentially help QSRs to optimize their rates. And once again, food aggregators can’t share information on competitors’ delivery fees with restaurants. However, DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence can provide all delivery-related insights – be it Delivery etas or fees.

Delivery fee trend by urbanity

6. Data on Ad Performance & ROI

Getting ad analytics will help QSRs better manage their budgets & increase the ROI on their Ad spends. For example, wouldn’t it be great if QSRs were able to understand which ad formats or promotions led to the most sales? Or which carousal ads had the most visibility in key zip codes where your QSR is expected to do maximum business? Or even insights into a competitor’s ads and promotions on food apps. Knowing this information will help restaurants spend sensibly when buying media on Food Apps & get the most bang for their advertising buck. Food apps do provide standard ad analytics – a number of clicks, CTR, and so on, but for more complex, insightful & actionable insights, there’s DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence!

Read how DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence helped an American QSR Chain understand the ROI delivered on ad spends across Food Delivery apps.

Insightful & actionable insights for QSR Chains

Insightful & actionable insights for QSR Chains

7. Data on Outlet Availability / Availability Audit

To avoid lost sales, being available & “open for business” on Food Apps during peak lunch & dinner hours is critical. Also on weekends, when order volumes are usually high. Sometimes because of technical glitches, QSR outlets appear unavailable on Food Apps. A glitch like that can lead to lost business, and the longer the glitch stays undiscovered, the greater the impact on revenue. While Food Aggregators do their best to make sure all QSRs are up and running on their app, using DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence, restaurants can now do an outlet audit to make sure that’s the case. With just a mere 2.8% unavailability, we saw a 28% drop in the sales for one of our QSR customers! That’s how critical Availability insights are.

Conclusion

Analyzing and optimizing sales, delivery, discoverability, availability & customer data is one of the fastest ways to help grow your QSRs revenue. However, the biggest challenge QSRs face is that it isn’t always easy to get this information. With DataWeave’s QSR Intelligence now some of that data is a little more accessible as we discussed in this blog. And additionally, here are the 7 Tricks we recommend QSRs to use to win on Food Apps.

June 15, 2022
Baby Formula Shortage Continues Alongside National Price Increases – June 2022

As the baby formula shortage continues, retailers and brands are working quickly to meet evolving consumer demand, considering supply chain driven headwinds, a baby formula recall, and inflationary-driven impacts. The DataWeave analytics team has actively tracked marketplace changes, alongside reports from the FDA, for the baby formula category at a state-level, and has shared the latest snapshot of product availability through June 7^th, 2022, below.

Average Baby Formula Product Availability by State – June 2022

While the U.S. has reached an average of 84% baby formula availability the first week of June 2022, given recent news headlines related to the baby formula shortage, and tracking out of stock encounters by state, we see a continued decline in availability throughout the Midwest versus product availability levels seen in May 2022.

Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky all show average availability for baby formula to be less than 50%, with Wisconsin being impacted the most at less than 18% average availability. While Texas shows an average availability improvement of 3.5% from the first two weeks of May 2022 to the first week of June 2022 as noted in the below chart, availability is also very low overall at less than 60%.

Average Change in Baby Formula Product Availability by State – May 2022 to June 2022

Outside of the Midwest and Texas, the other states for consumers to be cautious in are California, Virginia, and South Carolina as their month-over-month average change in availability also declined 4%, 12.6% and 8.2% respectively. Below is a snapshot of where the baby formula availability average started as of May 1^st through the 15^th, 2022.

Average Baby Formula Product Availability by State – May 2022

Baby Formula Product Availability Changes – March 2021 through May 2022

At an aggregated level overall, the availability for baby formula was relatively stable across all retailers considered within our analysis from March 2021 through September 2021, but has been on a steady decline ever since, starting at 81.7% availability in September and ending at 53.8% availability in May 2022 as noted in the below chart.

Monthly Average Availability for Baby Formula Across Major Retailer Websites

Looking at baby formula availability at a retail level, we saw yet again not all availability challenges were alike, by month or retailer. Costco.com lead the other retailers within our analysis for greatest average availability from March 2021 through May 2022, but had one of the lowest availability percentages at 62.7% in May 2021, and dropped to the lowest availability of the group in May 2022 at 37.5%.

Average Availability for Baby Formula Across Major Retailer Websites

Baby Formula Prices Increase as Availability Changes

While unnecessary price gouging is prohibited, price increases are still happening at a slow and steady rate across all the accounts included within our Pricing Intelligence analysis given external market factors outside of baby formula recall related stockout scenarios.

Kroger.com experienced the greatest average price increases overall, with the peak being in May 2022 at a 19% increase, 8% higher than other retailers on average, versus prices seen in March 2021 for the same baby formula products. The most significant price hike occurred on Kroger.com from December 2021 to January 2022. Other retailers like H-E-B, Target and Wegman’s have had minimal price changes from March 2021 through May 2022.

Average Price Inflation for Baby Formula, Indexed to March 2021

Address the Baby Formula Shortage With eCommerce Intelligence

As the market continues to evolve and baby formula supply works its way to catching back up to demand, our team will continue providing critical pricing, merchandising, and competitive insights at scale, to enable retailers and brands to develop data-driven growth strategies that directly influence their eCommerce performance, accelerate revenue growth and drive profitability.

Be sure to reach out to our Retail Analytics experts for access to more details regarding the above analysis, or for more information on our Commerce Intelligence and Digital Shelf solutions, and let us know what other category insights you’d be interested in seeing this year.

June 14, 2022
eCommerce in South Africa: Data-Driven approach to getting ahead
What an exciting month we’ve had at DataWeave! Our team flew down to gorgeous Cape Town, South Africa to attend the 8^th edition of #EcomAfrica! After months of Zoom calls and virtual events, it was a refreshing change to see our customers in person and meet some of the movers and shakers in eCommerce and some of the top South African brands.

Top eCommerce Companies in South Africa

My last visit to South Africa was before the pandemic. Things have changed since then, & the difference was stark! The eCommerce landscape had a paradigm shift during Covid-19 and grew exponentially. My customers spoke to me about the new opportunities, growth potential as well as challenges that came in because of this boom. For one, eCommerce in South Africa has become more competitive than ever – from online retail to grocery and food delivery to even alcohol delivery! All retail businesses seem to have jumped onto the eCommerce bandwagon.

A recent Deloitte report found that over 70% of South Africans shop online at least once a month & 2 out of 3 respondents said they plan to increase their frequency of online shopping. 65% said they know what they want, search online & check all stores that stock the product to compare prices. Price is one of the key factors that influence consumer purchase decisions. Other critical factors include delivery fee, delivery time, promotions & discounts & product assortment to name a few. In order to stay ahead in this highly competitive arena, both retailers and brands need to make data-driven decisions about critical KPIs like pricing to stay ahead of the competition.

Increased Online Shopping & Online Shopping Frequency

We’ve been working with customers in South Africa for over 4 years now, even before the pandemic. So on Day 2 of the event – S.Krishnan Thyagarajan “Krish”, President & COO, Dataweave had a chance to share our learnings and experience from all these years and how user data is critical to getting ahead & winning the eCommerce race in South Africa.

For the purpose of Krish’s keynote address, we tracked pricing insights for a finite set of categories across key South African retailers like Checkers, Pick n Pay, EveryShop, Incredible, Makro, Waltons, Shoprite & Dis-Chem to name a few over a period of 16 months from Dec 2020 to April 2022. We highlighted price increase and decrease opportunities and how each retailer reacted in order to stay competitive, increase sales and protect margins.

BATTLE of the eCommerce GIANTS!

Key Highlights from the Keynote
- Increasing prices where an opportunity exists helps retailers increase their margins exponentially. Pick n Pay had the highest action rate (73%) when it came to capitalizing on price increase opportunities v/s Dis-Chem at 11%.
- When it came to price decrease opportunities (in order to stay competitive with rival brands) Takealot was the most responsive retailer – they capitalized on 30% of the opportunities, followed by Pick n Pay at a close second (28%) and Shoprite & Dis-Chem at just 4%.
- Most retailers took between 1 – 5 days maximum to make price changes which means responsiveness to the market among all retailers is high making it more important for online retailers to always be on their toes.
- The 2 categories where most retailers capitalized on Price Increase Opportunities were Sauces & Condiments and Crackers & Biscuits.
Want to watch the Keynote video on Demand? Click here to register & watch.

Price Increase & Decrease Opportunities

Bonus video content!
- Watch the Impact of price increase & decrease opportunities on Private Label brands!
- See how product stock availability impacts price changes over a 16-month period.
- Find out which brands are in the lead in the Skin Care, Pet, Baby, Laundry & Cleaning Aid categories
If you’re an online retailer in South Africa & need insights on staying competitive with the right pricing, product assortment, delivery time, delivery rates, and the other key influencers that affect customers’ choice of online retailers, sign up for a demo with our team at DataWeave to know how we can help!
June 6, 2022
The Rise of South African eCommerce : The Growth, & the Future
2020 onwards, the South African economy was crippled due to the pandemic and lockdowns. However, according to StatsSA, South Africa’s online retail market share grew to 2.8% in 2020, double that in 2018. After the pandemic, South Africa’s eCommerce industry grew by 66% in 2020 compared to the year before. This increase was primarily because of restrictions on traditional stores that led to a 30% reduction in in-store purchases.
According to a Deloitte study, over 70% of South Africans shop online at least once a month because of convenience. Household appliances, footwear, clothing, electronics, and health products are the most popular categories among South African online customers.

Top Categories

South African Ecommerce

These eCommerce stores account for 15% of online revenue in South Africa
1. Takealot.com: Revenue US$602 million
2. Superbalist.com: Revenue US$85 million
3. Woolworths.co.za: Revenye US$57 million
In this blog, we will discuss emerging eCommerce trends in South Africa and their impact on the various retail segments.

Trends to watch in 2022

Trends to watch

1. Quick commerce

Quick delivery, especially when it comes to groceries, medicines, and food has become a customer expectation now. Q-commerce, a trend that capitalizes on optimizing delivery time, has become common in food tech companies and is now gaining traction in grocery delivery too, especially after the pandemic. UberEats, Checkers, Pick ‘n Pay, and Jumia is some of the country’s biggest Q-commerce players.

2. Omnichannel eCommerce

Omnichannel experience has taken center stage for retailers in South Africa after the pandemic. According to Nielseniq’s study, 30% of South African consumers indicated they had shifted their shopping habits to online shopping from in-person grocery store visits between March 2021 and 2022.

3. Digital Payment Trends

The digital payment ecosystem in South Africa has seen a massive growth trajectory after the pandemic. Customers seamlessly use digital payments across shopping, entertainment, groceries, food, health, and wellness – a trend we suspect is here to stay.

4. Buy Now Pay Later

Buy now pay later is an interest-free mode of payment that is popular worldwide for helping customers who cannot make high-value purchases. Consumers don’t have to pay any price upfront and pay off the amount in interest-free installments over a predefined period. The BNPL is forecasted to account for 13.6% of global eCommerce payments by 2024.

5. Chatbots

Quick response to customer queries and problems is instrumental in increasing conversion rate and sales. However, it can be difficult to respond to emails and instant chat 24/7 for small businesses. This is where automated chatbots are helping South African retailers answer customer questions promptly and correctly.

The 4 Fastest-Growing Retail Segments

4 Fastest-Growing Retail Segments

1. Online Retail

eCommerce & online retail grew 20% YOY after the pandemic. Retailers saw a huge increase in the adoption of online shopping by consumers. Traditional brick-and-mortar stores looked for omnichannel opportunities to keep up with online retailers. Mr. Price, a clothing retailer in South Africa, saw a surge in online sales by a massive 90% between April and June 2020. There is a similar success story where OneDayOnly, another South African online retailer, saw 40% growth during the same period.

… but this growth surge brought in some challenges for retailers too. With more and more customers shopping online, competition increased. Price-sensitive customers would constantly compare prices across online retailers before making a purchase. It became critical for retailers to price their products right to beat the competition & win the sale, without hurting their margins!

2. On-Demand Grocery Delivery

Groceries saw an increase of 54% from 2019 driven by the pandemic & lockdown restrictions.

South African eCommerce companies offer a wide range of on-demand services, from taxi rides and grocery orders to liquor delivery. Retailers fulfill orders from stores to offer affordable rates and quick delivery across South Africa. It replicates the instant gratification of purchasing products from brick and mortar stores and the added benefits of the hyper convenience of shopping from a mobile or a computer.

Read quotes from our customers at Talabat, Glovo & Grab Food – we worked closely with them & helped them in their efforts to scale through this global Q-Commerce boom.

3. Online Food Delivery

According to Statista, revenue in the online food delivery segment in South Africa is projected to reach US$0.87bn in 2022. As competition heats up and more and more players enter the market, staying competitive is becoming increasingly challenging for food delivery businesses.

Bolt Foods SA said they grew 50% month on month in mid-2021 and said they had to bet on making sure they were offering competitive prices in order to get ahead. Additionally, in their quest to have a stronger competitive advantage, Bolt Food says it is also offering customers a very low delivery fee, lower than Uber Eats & Mr. D since delivery costs are a major consideration for customers when using food delivery apps.

The right price, product assortment, delivery fee, and delivery eta are critical to scaling a Food Delivery business. If you’re in the food-tech business, reach out and we can tell you how DataWeave’s Food Delivery Intelligence can help you scale quickly and profitably!

4. Social Commerce

With approximately 41.19 million South African customers engaging in online activity, there is a huge shift in user behavior as customers get comfortable purchasing directly via social platforms instead of online retailers or physical stores. Social commerce uses networking websites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as vehicles to promote and sell products and services.

What matters to South African online shoppers?

Between June and November 2020, South African consumers mostly used online retailers monthly (42%), food delivery services weekly (36%), and online classifieds less than once a month (34%).

Here is a summary of things that matter to South African shoppers when they shop online:

1. Easy product discovery and competitive pricing

Most customers start their online shopping with a product in mind and look for discounts and sales across retailers. More than 67% of respondents of a survey have said that they go to a specific online store and search for the product they want. Almost the same share of consumers said they compare online stores to find offers for products they want. Price plays an important part in product selection.

In order to offer the most competitive pricing, retailers in South Africa need to keep a keen eye on competitor pricing. They need to identify gaps and opportunities to make price changes to not only offer the most attractive price to customers but also drive more revenue and margins by pricing products right.

2. Reliable Delivery time

81% of South African consumers say that unreliable delivery time is one of the reasons that affect their choice of an online store. Quick delivery time has become a differentiator in the eCommerce space, where ‘next day delivery or even ‘same-day delivery’ have become the norm. South African online shoppers want reliable delivery times that suit their busy schedules.

Read more here, about how DataWeave helped an America QSR understand the correlation between their delivery time & sales volumes!

3. Low delivery fee

86% of South African customers believe that high delivery fees impact their online stores’ choices. The high delivery cost is a problem for low-income customers and customers who shop daily.
If you want to track how your delivery fee compares to your competition and how it’s impacting your sales, our Food Delivery Intelligence solutions are for you!

4. Customer Service

Your company’s customer service should be responsive, smooth, omnichannel, and hassle-free. 78% of South African customers are frustrated with delays in customer support from online retailers. Slow response times and lack of communication in case of delays, delivery, and refunds hamper the customer experience drastically.

Customer Service

Conclusion

eCommerce in South Africa is growing at unprecedented rates. There has been a surge in the appetite of South Africans for online shopping and online retailers across the board are gearing up to meet this demand.

If you’re an online retailer in South Africa & need insights on staying competitive with the right pricing, product assortment, delivery time, delivery rates, and the other key influencers that affect customers’ choice of online retailers, sign up for a demo with our team at DataWeave to know how can help!
May 30, 2022
The Future of eCommerce is Social: Demystifying the Social Commerce Revolution
Social commerce is the selling of goods and services within a social media platform. Brands use social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter to promote and sell products. These platforms have become an integral part of consumers’ everyday life because they continue to engage users with relatable content, making them scroll their feeds for hours.

The Social Commerce model capitalizes on this high user engagement & moves social media beyond its traditional role in the top-of-the-funnel marketing process by encouraging users to shop without leaving their preferred apps. According to the Social Media Investment Report, 91% of executives agree that social commerce is driving an increasing portion of their marketing revenue, and 85% report that social data will be a primary source of business intelligence.

Let’s talk a little bit about why brands should consider selling via social media platforms:

Social Commerce vs. eCommerce vs. QCommerce

While they may fall under the same umbrella of online selling, social commerce, quick commerce, and eCommerce are three very different concepts
- eCommerce refers to online shopping via a (retailer or brand) website or app. Customers can access these platforms via desktop or mobile devices. However, the sales funnel generally looks the same. These brands and retailers use top-of-the-funnel tactics like social media content, digital ads, and other marketing strategies to encourage customers to visit the online store. There are three main types of eCommerce businesses: Business-to-Business (Alibaba, Amazon Business, eWorldTrade), Business-to-Consumer (websites such as Amazon, Rakuten, and Zalando), and Consumer-to-Consumer (platforms such as eBay & Etsy).
- Quick Commerce (or QCommerce) refers to eCommerce businesses that deliver goods within a couple of hours or even minutes. Although it’s sometimes used interchangeably with on-demand delivery or instant commerce, the idea of quick commerce has been around in the food industry for ages now. It has been recently ushered into the mainstream by evolving consumer preferences for quicker delivery of groceries and FMCG goods.
- Social commerce brings the store to the customer rather than redirecting customers to an online store. It removes unnecessary steps and simplifies the buying process by letting the customer checkout directly through social media platforms, creating a frictionless buying journey for the customer. Additionally, social media platforms are mobile-friendly, a huge benefit for brands because increasingly more and more customers are accessing the internet through mobile devices.
Social Commerce

Rise of Social Commerce

First used in 2005 by Yahoo!, ‘social commerce’ refers to collaborative shopping tools such as user ratings, shared pick lists, and user-generated content. Social media networks snowballed throughout the 2000s and 2010s, alongside a general increase in eCommerce, leading customers and merchants to quickly recognize the benefits of buying and selling through social media networks. Social media platforms have since evolved from merely a showcase tool for brands. They now serve as virtual storefronts and extensions of a company’s website or brick and mortar stores, capable of handling the buying experience.

Top Social Commerce Platforms

Social media platforms aim to keep visitors engaged on their platforms for as long as possible. Increased time in-app or on-site maximizes their opportunity to serve ads, a primary source of revenue generation. Social media platforms have millions of active users and they have a great power to help companies and individuals build their brands, interact with consumers, and support after-sales. Here are the top social commerce platforms:
- Facebook
Facebook introduced Facebook Shops to capitalize on the commercial opportunity by allowing vendors to advertise and sell directly through the platform. Facebook integrates social commerce with shopping, allowing users to purchase products smoothly. Facebook shops offer a smooth user experience where users can review products and get recommendations from trusted acquaintances. Customers can directly interact with the merchant’s customer service department post-purchase.
- Instagram
60% of people discover new products on Instagram. Owned by Facebook, Instagram facilitates in-app shopping and handles the entire transactions within the app itself. Users scrolling on Instagram often wants to follow trends and replicate the looks of their role models or favorite influencers. By offering purchasing options in the app, Instagram benefits from the platform’s rich visual imagery and videos, allowing businesses to sell an idea rather than the traditional process of selling a product.
- TikTok
Shopify partnered with TikTok to introduce shopping and drive sales through the younger and seemingly ever-expanding TikTok audience. With TikTok for Business Ads Manager, brands and merchants can create in-feed video-based content depending on their product offering. This partnership allows Shopify merchants to expand to the TikTok audience.
- Snapchat
Snapchat has recently launched Brand profiles, a feature that allows users to scroll through a merchant’s products and buy them in-app. This new experience is powered by Shopify too. Merchants can create Brand Profiles or Native Stores that allow users to purchase products from the app.

Pinterest users are there for Shopping Inspiration
- Pinterest
Pinterest is also an image-based platform where users create boards of their favorite wedding accessories, home decor, fashion trends, etc. Pinterest doesn’t specifically offer social commerce for the global audience. Rather, it allows business accounts to create ‘Product Pins’ that are displayed in the brand’s Pinterest shop. Only U.S. customers can purchase within the app. Users from other countries are redirected to the eCommerce site to complete the sale. We have added Pinterest to this list because 89% of Pinterest users are there for shopping inspiration.

Pinterest is an image-based platform where users create boards

Why Should Brands Care About Social Commerce
- To enhance social media presence and brand awareness
If your target demographic is in the 18-to-34 age range, they’re already on social media and waiting to shop while they scroll. According to Sprout Social, over 68% of consumers have already purchased directly from social media and nearly all (98%) consumers plan to make at least one purchase through social or influencer commerce this year. You can enhance brand awareness by selling on social media platforms. Influencer marketing is an amazing way to build brand awareness since customers are now seeking authenticity from micro-influencers rather than big-name celebrities.
- To generate social proof
90% of online shoppers say that they read online reviews before making an online purchase. Whether it’s an automated follow-up email or a message through the social media platform, ask for a review after your product has been delivered to the customer. You can also offer incentives like a contest to encourage previous customers to weigh in and share their experiences. These steps will allow you to collect social proof since it’s vital to build a positive reputation online. You can also ask customers to create small product review videos that you can share on your social feeds in creative ways. You can also post user-generated content, create a carousel of positive comments, or host a live video with happy customers.

Social Proof
- To simplify the buying process for consumers
Traditional eCommerce involves several steps. It starts with displaying ads on social media platforms and customers being redirected to the business website for completing the transaction. To complete the transaction, customers also have to create an account or manually fill in the credit card details and delivery address. On the other hand, social is only a three-step process — find, click and buy.

Counterfeit Products

Conclusion

While social commerce is proliferating, it also has a few setbacks like the rise of counterfeit products. Counterfeiting has expanded into social media and has become an under-reported but vital hub for counterfeiters. A counterfeit detection solution can help brands and merchants identify & remove fake and unauthorized products. Technologies like image recognition can help in counterfeit detection by capturing fake logos and discrepancies. Removing counterfeit products will help brands safeguard customer loyalty and prevent fake products from harming your bottom line.

Here’s how DataWeave helped Classic Accessories, a leading manufacturer of high-quality furnishings & accessories identify counterfeit products across multiple retail marketplace websites eliminating 22 hours of time spent per week conducting manual audits – read the case study here.

Are you a brand or a retailer worried about counterfeits? Sign up for a demo with our team to know how we can help you track, identify and eliminate fakes!
May 16, 2022
How Inflation has hit the Retail Industry

Inflation has resurfaced after a decade of tranquil price increases. The persistent COVID-related supply chain disruptions have been a driving factor in increasing consumer costs since some commodities are harder to come by. While inflation is a normal economic phenomenon, the current 3.81% inflation rate has increased the cost of living for families across the globe.

Global Inflation Rate. Source: Statista

Worldwide inflation is expected to remain near 5.0% in early 2022 before gradually easing in response to industrial and agricultural commodity price declines. Additionally, the global consumer price inflation peaked from 2.2% in 2020 to 3.8% in 2021 and will average 4.1% in 2022 before subsiding to 2.8% in 2023.

In this blog, you’ll learn about the impact of inflation on the Retail Industry.

What is Inflation?

Inflation is an economic term that describes an overall increase in the price of goods and services in an economy, and a by-product of inflation is the devaluation of the currency used within that economy. For example, a clothing retailer that used to pay $8 for a t-shirt two years ago will now have to pay $10 for that exact product. The t-shirt hasn’t changed at all. However, it has become 25% more expensive. Inflation and the devaluation of currency are part of the reasons why they’d now pay $2 more for that same T-shirt.

Also Read: Top 7 strategies to sell effectively on Amazon

Impact of inflation on Retail

FMCG

The Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector will continue to grow because there is growth in household goods spending despite the Russia-Ukrainian crisis, global interest rate, and rising fuel prices. In fact, the demand for consumer packaged goods rose sharply in countries heavily affected by the pandemic. However, the FMCG sector will see a rise in prices of commodities because crucial resources such as cooking oil, tea, cocoa, etc., become scarce. The persistent shock to the supply chain has forced various FMCG companies to increase their prices. For instance, Mondelez, a Fortune 500–listed snack and beverage company, announced a 6-7% price increase.

Inflation for Fashion & Pharma Industry

Fashion

The global fashion industry posted a 20% decline in revenues in 2019–20. Inflation in fashion is caused by transportation bottlenecks, material shortages, rising shipping costs, and straining supply and demand. The global fashion industry will see complete recovery in 2022. COVID-caused supply and demand constraints have eased, but shoppers will have to reconcile to price jumps in everything from bags to shoes.

Pharma

Pharmaceuticals are recognized as an essential commodity and therefore have a massive impact on the household budget. Vizient has projected a 3.09% increase in the inflation rate in drug prices from July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023. It shows how inflation has a direct impact on prescription drug costs. Notably, retail prices for some of the most widely used prescription drugs are expected to increase 2x as much as inflation. The demand for pharmaceutical drugs has been higher post-pandemic, ensuring that consumers’ total demand and spending in this vertical will remain unchanged.

Comparison of New, Used & Electric cars

Highest & Lowest Inflation in Beauty category. Source: nielseniq.com

Automotive

The rise of both new and used cars has been steeply increasing partly because of the shortage of semiconductors and the backlog from the closure of factories during COVID-19. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been a 24.4% inflation in the used car purchase prices and an 8.8% increase in the new car purchase price. Rising oil prices across the globe and the historical oil crisis fuelled by the Ukraine-Russia war have strained many people’s budgets. However, the automobile market is seeing an uptake in demand for electrical vehicles (EVs). EVs represented 14% of car sales between January and June 2021.

Beauty

COVID-19 brought new challenges to the cosmetics industry, chief among this being face-covering required by law. In light of social distancing and lockdowns across the globe, consumers were buying less makeup. The rising cost of labor, energy, and raw materials used in beauty products have resulted in a “once-in-two-decade” backdrop for price hikes. The cost of palm oil, a common material in beauty products, has soared 82% in two years due to Indonesian labor shortages. Nevertheless, consumers will spend more time outside the house. Beauty price per unit changes shot up 17% in-store and online in 2021.

5 Things that will help retailers during inflationary times

1. Observe Competition

Retailers should follow their competitors closely—when they start to raise/lower prices, consider following suit. Using competitive data to gauge price changes will help in managing price parity. However, excessive discounts and lower prices to gain an advantage over your competitor could backfire in various ways. For example, low pricing may convey that your products aren’t as good as your competitors’, impacting your long-term brand image. Moreover, lowering prices to sell more doesn’t necessarily mean higher profits, especially during high inflation. To leverage this strategy effectively, retailers must first identify SKUs that have the highest impact on their pricing.

2. Build a structured and targeted pricing strategy

An effective pricing strategy that leverages differences in product, channels, and customers will help retailers to maintain long-term value for their business and customers. However, customers might react differently to a steep price increase. Broad price increases will demonstrate insensitivity and erode customer trust. Instead, retailers can thoughtfully tailor their inflationary price increases for each customer and product segment with a competitive pricing strategy. With a competitive and historical pricing strategy, brands can examine their customers’ end-to-end profitability and willingness to pay relative to a comparable peer set.

Price Competitiveness for the right items

3. Rethink commercial positioning

The pandemic and rise of inflation during 2020–2021 have profoundly impacted how consumers live and what they value. Understanding how your consumer’s needs have shifted and used a promotion strategy to manage today’s inflationary pressures is crucial. As new behaviors emerge post-pandemic, retailers must prepare for the potential top-line impact of demand shifts. Rethink commercial positioning and review marketing and packaging strategies, including the potential use of nonuniform and, in some cases, nonprice mechanisms.

4. Ensure price competitiveness on the right items

The Key-Value Item (KVIs) list should be reviewed again, considering changing shopper needs and habits during the pandemic, plus the supply and demand shock that the industry is currently experiencing. Price-sensitive and vulnerable shoppers are finding this inflationary period particularly tough, so brands might require an even deeper investment in KVI pricing. Reinvest base prices on essential products to drive volume for your best price-sensitive (PS) customers. Compete only where you need to be without overspending. Online channels should continue to reflect in-store prices and diverge during this time. Pricing Optimisation software enables best practices to simultaneously manage a high number of price increase requests.

5. Revisit promotions to conserve costs and preserve stock availability

Increasing the number of promoted products is a reflexive response to inflation, but it’s not the right response for building sustainable sales or longer-term loyalty. Inflationary times offer an excellent opportunity to reset promotional strategies to save money and margin. Retailers can increase sales and seize opportunities with a promotional pricing strategy. Increased promotional activity has a knock-on effect vs pricing position in high-low strategies and erodes overall value perception, creating a vicious circle of more promotions equals poorer value.

Conclusion

Today’s economic climate and associated pricing pressures are challenging for retailers and customers. Some companies have responded by announcing an increase in prices across product categories. Companies can manage pricing margins responsibly and profitably during inflation. Determining how and where new opportunities exist can help companies control inflation, drive growth, and remain profitable.

Need help to arrive at the right pricing & discounting strategies to counter inflation? Sign up for a demo with our team to know how we can help!

May 11, 2022
Share of Keyword Search Cinco de Mayo 2022

As inflation continues to hike costs for consumers and supply chains challenge them to maintain loyalty, there is still an active audience willing to pay the ultimate price for the convenience of food and alcohol delivery. That being said, we analyzed 8 popular Retail and Delivery Intermediary websites and 11 popular ‘Cinco de Mayo’ keywords to see which Brands are predicted to win the battle of Digital Shelf Share of Search this holiday.

2022 Cinco de Mayo Share of Search Insights – Top Brands for ‘Cinco de Mayo’

Opportunities for Food & Bev on Cinco de Mayo

While most of our analysis focused on popular Cinco de Mayo food and beverage products, none of these brands populated on either Target (pictured on left below) or Walmart (pictured on right below) page 1 search results for the term ‘Cinco de Mayo’. Keyword search results for this term are dominated primarily by décor brands as indicated below.

Brands Achieving Top Share of Search for Food and Beverage Categories on Cinco de Mayo 2022

Share of Keyword Search Results – Alcohol Category

Three of the most popular alcohol types sought out during Cinco de Mayo are ‘Mexican Beer’, ‘Mezcal’, and ‘Tequila’. Below are the brands dominating Share of Keyword Search results on each of the major retail websites we researched.

AmazonFresh, Meijer, Kroger, and Sam’s Club Share of Search – Beer, Mezcal, and Tequila Keywords on Cinco de Mayo 2022

We also reviewed the same keyword performance across popular delivery intermediaries to see how Share of Keyword Search altered for ‘Mexican Beer’, ‘Mezcal’, and ‘Tequila’. The results are below for TotalWine, Instacart, Drizly and GoPuff:

TotalWine, Instacart, Drizly, and GoPuff of Search – Beer, Mezcal, and Tequila Keywords on Cinco de Mayo 2022

The keyword ‘Agave’ is also a popular search term within the alcohol category during the time leading up to Cinco de Mayo. We reviewed keyword search performance at various zip codes to see how price points that populated on page 1 search results varied given the change in median income. Below are the results:

Share of Search for Alcohol by Price Point and Zip Code on AmazonFresh

Share of Keyword Search Results – Grocery Categories

We also reviewed some of the most popular grocery items purchased during Cinco de Mayo by Keyword Share of Search results to see which brands are primed to win the Digital Shelf this year. Below are the results for Target.com and Walmart.com.

Walmart and Target Share of Search – Food and Beverage Keywords on Cinco de Mayo 2022

Below are the results for the same popular grocery items and alcohol keywords related to Cinco de Mayo and the page 1 results seen for Brand Share of Search on Safeway.com.

Safeway Share of Search – Food and Beverage Keywords on Cinco de Mayo 2022

Access to these types of real-time digital marketplace insights can enable retailers and brands to make strategic decisions and help drive profitable growth in an intensifying competitive environment. Be sure to reach out to our Retail Analytics experts for access to more details regarding the above analysis, and let us know what other holiday insights you’d be interested in seeing this year. Happy Cinco de Mayo!

May 4, 2022
What is Customer Price Perception and why it is important
Finding the right price often requires a trade-off between margin and price perception. Brands may want to defeat competitors’ prices on all their products, but that can often lead to losses because sales directly link to price perception. Instead of trying to stay competitive across the board on all products, brands must identify key value categories (KVCs) and key-value items (KPIs) whose prices buyers tend to remember and price those products competitively. In this scenario, they can make up for lowered prices on key products by fixing higher prices on other products.

Consumers’ perception of price fairness largely determines their experience with a brand. Brands selling online can often have a disconnect between their prices and what customers expect their prices to be. However, that does not mean spiraling downwards by getting trapped in discounting cycles and heavy promotions that can harm your bottom line. Instead, brands require real-time monitoring across thousands of stock-keeping units (SKUs) to identify key categories and items they need to price with care. In this blog, you’ll learn about price perception and the factors that influence it.

What is Price Perception?

Price perception is the perceived worth of a product or service in the consumer’s mind. It is one of the leading variables in the consumer’s buying process. Buyers are unaware of the true cost of production for the products they buy. Instead, they make buying decisions based on an internal feeling about how much certain products are worth and which brand offers them the best value. To offer competitive prices and yet obtain a higher price for products, brands often pursue marketing strategies to improve the price perception of their brand and products.

Price Perception

However, brands should not fall into the trap of assuming that price perception is a competitor’s price index. It’s not about offering the lowest price on certain SKUs. Not every brand strives to offer the lowest prices. Some brands take a slightly different approach to ensure the right value for their products. For example, take a look at Trader Joe’s, a grocery chain that has never claimed low costs. They’ve always taken a holistic approach to their pricing and customers to build a loyal following. And it worked well for them. Trader Joe’s can boast one of a high-value perception score, despite not having rock-bottom prices.

Marketplaces such as Walmart and Amazon may not have the best prices on every item. Still, customer perception is that they will have the lowest prices and will often shift the share of sales towards such platforms over businesses that offer the same or even lower prices.

Some things to consider:
- What do your customers think of your brand?
- What are the key factors that are driving your customers’ price perceptions?
- Is your product mix properly aligned with your brand perception?
- Are you communicating the most important and relevant information to your customers?
- Is your message being received and understood?
- Who do your customers see as your competitors, and why?
Also Read: 11 Reasons why your eCommerce Business is fail

What is Price Positioning?

Price positioning is pricing products or services within a certain price range. It indicates where certain services or products lie in relation to competitors’ pricing and in the mind of different customers. A brand’s price positioning has a huge impact on whether the products are seen as priced low or not. The following is a great way to understand the price-value matrix:

Price Positioning

Your brand’s position in this matrix will depend on your pricing objectives, competition, and customer loyalty. Price positioning helps the marketing and operating teams understand customers’ perceptions of your brand and convince customers to buy your products. Brands need a holistic approach toward setting prices for their products in order to drive conversions through intelligent pricing and competitive insights.

Factors that influence Price Perception

Price-Quality Relationship

Price is often an indicator of product quality. The general rule is that the higher-priced products are perceived to have better quality, implying that brands should consider a rational quality-price relationship in their pricing or promo strategy. For example, it might not be best practice to have similar prices for both good and low-quality products because customers will perceive low-quality products as overpriced and might not purchase from you.

Price-Consciousness

Customers aren’t price conscious about every product. Instead, they are only price conscious about certain products under the best price guarantee or BGP. For instance, if buyers find your BGP products more expensive than your competitors, the cheaper products in your assortment will still be perceived as expensive.

Value-Consciousness

During markdown periods, ensure that you are not undermining the efforts to shape and maintain price perception by offering extreme or complex discounts. In an attempt to clear stocks, promotions simply confuse the shopping experience for customers and further deteriorate trust in your brand. Your promotional offers should keep price perception during the holiday season or clearance sales by offering a simplified promotional program. Start by understanding which price mechanics and SKUs work best for your target customer segment. You should also reduce over-communication on hero deals else buyers will assume that you incorrectly price products during new seasonal launches.

Prestige Sensitivity

Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard professor, argues that 95% of all purchasing decisions are subconscious. Luxury brands are a great example of how psychology directly links to price perception. Customers buy premium or luxury products to demonstrate their social status. In this scenario, buyers don’t hesitate to buy expensive products from certain brands even if they are explicitly overpriced. Thus, brands selling premium products will have to ensure pricing is coherent with buyers’ expectations.

Every customer wants to know they’re getting the best value. They use the highest and lowest prices in a range to understand how expensive a product or brand is. So, by removing high price point lines with low volume, customers will see more minor price points around the store. Brands must merchandise entry price points to help customers identify the lowest prices and improve the perception of their product ranges.

Product Range

How to adjust Price Perception

Here are three ways for brands to improve price parity:
- Marketing to influence Price Perception
An efficient pricing management strategy will focus on competitiveness and establishing the right price perception among your customers. You can influence customers’ price perception by improving the look and feel of your online stores since simpler designs are often reflections of lower prices. Another great way to influence price perception is to offer loyalty and reward programs that also improve brand loyalty and reinforces the vision of an economy store irrespective of the prices of your products.
- Competitive Analysis
Brands can understand price differences after a competitive analysis. Customers often search for similar products across brands to find the best deals, and you will be able to understand customer opinion through competitor analysis.
- Price Management Automation
A price monitoring platform can help brands to stay on top of promotions and discounts offered by their competitors. A price intelligence software will help brands associate products by similarity criteria and compare the pricing of their products with those of competitors. It offers a detailed view of the market and ensures that brands take care of their bottom line.

Conclusion

When a consumer comes across a similar low-priced product or service from a different brand, they may see it as a good deal or might perceive it not worthy of their time or money. What consumers think about your brand’s price is just as important as the actual price of that product. A buyer may sense a company as “upscale” and assume that they have high prices, or they may see a brand as a discount retailer whose prices are too high for its reputation. At times, consumers might also see cheaper alternatives as inferior. It’s not easy for a brand to understand its customers’ perception of price vs. value it offers. Brands need a long-term, dynamic pricing strategy that matches the demands and trends of a global, competitive market. And in order to drive sustainable growth, they need to make smarter pricing and promotion decisions with insights into competitive pricing.

Learn how DataWeave can help make sense of your and your competitor’s pricing & promotional strategies and help your brand build the right Price Perception. Sign up for a demo with our team to know more.
May 4, 2022
Top 7 strategies to sell effectively on Amazon

According to MarketingCharts, 63% of online shoppers start their buying journey on Amazon. This shows that customers believe they will find the products they are looking for with competitive prices and excellent customer service on Amazon. Amazon is one of the most dominant eCommerce marketplaces with 197 million users and 112 million Amazon Prime members. Brands can sell on Amazon to capitalize on this vast customer base by showcasing and promoting their products properly.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at the top 7 strategies to sell effectively on Amazon:

1. Boost Product Discoverability using Ads

Amazon Advertising helps sellers, brands, and agencies to drive profitability by making sure product discoverability is high & shoppers are able to find their brand with ease. The ads on Amazon fuel product discovery and improve conversion rate. The advertising options on Amazon are designed to help brands increase exposure, generate incremental sales, boost organic rankings, and drive growth.

Amazon has three PPC programs: sponsored product ads, sponsored brands ads, and sponsored display ads. Brands can increase visibility on Amazon with these three paid campaigns. You can sponsor products or your brand for related searches on Amazon. Businesses only pay for clicks received.

Sponsored products are for individual product listings that appear on shopping results pages and product detail pages. Sponsored brands are for showcasing brand portfolios such as logo, custom headline, and a selection of products on the shopping results page. The last is sponsored display, a self-service advertising solution for displaying ads on and off Amazon.

Promotions for Brand and SKU’s

2. Improve your Amazon SEO using effective Product Descriptions

To effectively sell on Amazon, businesses first have to understand the A9 algorithm. Amazon uses A9 Algorithm to decide which products are ranked in search results, emphasizing sales conversions. This algorithm helps Amazon promote listings that are more likely to result in sales.

Keywords in product descriptions are one of the main driving factors that the Amazon A9 algorithm looks for in determining relevance to search queries and setting rankings on its results pages. Therefore, brands must integrate high volume and significantly relevant keywords as part of their listings. Crafting product descriptions with the right keywords will provide compelling reasons for buyers to purchase the product and for the A9 algorithm to better rank the brands. Brands can analyze and optimize their content to improve discoverability across Amazon. Accurate product descriptions help users make informed decisions and allow brands to deliver a consistent customer experience.

Detailed Descriptions and Highlights

3. Improve your Product Visuals

Avoid using standard visuals when displaying your products in Amazon’s image gallery. Product images are the hook that encourages visitors to click on your products. However, Amazon has specific image requirements that you’ll need to adhere to while presenting products. When shopping on Amazon, potential buyers are looking for high-definition and clearly visible photos. Thus, you will need diversity in images if you want your product and photos to stand out.

In addition to images, brands can make their product descriptions better through video content. Videos help your brand to stand out, build a more personal relationship with customers, and lead to increased sales. One study on eCommerce sellers found that using product videos increases sales for online stores by 144%.

Product Images

4. Switch to Intelligent Pricing & Win the Buy Box

Intelligent and competitive pricing is the most essential lever for revenue growth. With advanced technology like AI and analytics, brands can get insights into competitive pricing and develop an intelligent pricing strategy to calculate real-time changes in pricing optimally.

Amazon wants to give the consumer the best value for their money and thus has a Buy Box option. The white box on the right side of the Amazon product detail page is called the Buy Box, and customers can directly add items for purchase to their cart. However, not all sellers are eligible to win the Buy Box.

Thanks to Amazon’s customer-obsessed approach and high competition, only businesses with excellent seller metrics have a chance to win a share of Buy Box. Amazon weighs low prices with high seller metrics. If your brand has near-perfect performance metrics, having higher prices can still get you a share of the Buy Box. In contrast, brands with mid-range metrics will probably need to focus on offering the most competitive price.

But, why is the Buy Box important? According to BigCommerce, 82% of sales on Amazon go through the Buy Box, and the rate is even higher for mobile purchases. Getting insights into your competitor’s pricing with our Digital Shelf Solution will help you improve seller metrics and find the right pricing strategy for your products.

5. Provide Plenty of Social Proof

Testimonials can increase sales page conversions by 34%. Social proof has emerged to be of great importance in the eCommerce world, and it isn’t limited to recommendations from people customers know in the “real world.” A survey conducted by BrightLocal revealed that 31% of consumers reported that they read more online reviews in 2020 than ever due to Covid-19.

Product ratings and reviews on Amazon are at the center of the recommended products section, product listing page, and search results. Interestingly, customer feedback also has a huge impact on a brand’s ODR or Order Defect Rate. It is one of the most critical measurements tracked by Amazon. ODR is a measure of customers who have had a negative experience with you as a seller. Amazon uses it to assess a brand’s health as a seller. The ODR indicator is driven by customer feedback, so review management is the primary step for brands to avoid an Amazon ODR warning and improve their order defect.

6. Go Global

The Amazon marketplace is available in countries and markets worldwide, allowing brands to explore new territories and sell their products globally. Each foreign territory has a unique Amazon site that resonates with its culture and audience, making it easy for global sellers to compete with other brands. If your eCommerce brand has the operation capacity to expand globally, Amazon offers state-of-the-art international logistic capabilities.

Brands can expand in European countries like France, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, etc., and Asia Pacific locations like India, Japan, and Australia. Amazon is also available in emerging eCommerce locations like the Middle East, Brazil, Turkey, and Singapore.

7. Build a Branded Store

One of the best strategies to stand out on Amazon is to feature your products on a branded Store. Amazon has free tools that allow grants to build an online store where brands and sellers can showcase products and connect with customers. These stores look different from the typical Amazon listing layout and also have the option to create detailed pages with A+ content.

Build your Brand Page

For instance, Netgear, a company that offers technology-related products has an excellent branded store on Amazon. The brand has embedded images and videos that address buyers’ needs and how users’ lives are affected by using their products. The most attractive feature about this store is that they have integrated the value offered by their products into new use cases because of the current pandemic. For example, they’ve used phrases like “Make Online Learning fast and fun” and “Work from office at office speed.” Additionally, the categories and search tab help buyers search for specific products easily.

Creating branded stores allows you to build a beautiful brand experience for customers and offers a multi-page, immersive shopping experience. Brands can pick unique designs, integrate promotions, and use rich media to create a custom curation of handpicked products.

Conclusion

Amazon has 9.7 million sellers worldwide, of which 1.9 million are actively selling on the marketplace. The competition on Amazon is fierce, and it’s continuously increasing. Despite a large number of active sellers on Amazon, only a tiny fraction generates a significant portion of its total sales. Fewer than one in ten active Amazon sellers generated over $100,000 in annual sales, and only one percent of them hit the $1 million sales mark. Use these strategies to develop a comprehensive understanding of the Amazon platform and how to sell effectively on the platform while maximizing your presence amid rising competition.

April 26, 2022
11 Reasons why your eCommerce Business is failing

No matter where your eCommerce business sells, there are some fundamentals that brands have to get right to achieve sales targets. Brands need to find the right product/market fit, nail their lead acquisition strategy, and design a qualified sales funnel to turn prospects into leads and eventually returning customers. They will also have to analyze their customer’s buying journey and get insights into competitors’ strategies to understand what works for their business.

If your eCommerce business is struggling, read this blog to learn about steps you can take to increase sales and keep your business afloat.

1. Lack of social proof

Customers often check for reviews or testimonials before making a purchase. Our decisions are consciously or unconsciously influenced by the opinions, choices, and actions of people around us. Social proof helps brands build customer trust, adds credibility to their business, improves brand presence, and validates customers’ buying decisions. 92% of consumers are more likely to trust user-generated content (UGC) and non-paid recommendations than any other type of advertising. Additionally, brands should also find ways to combat negative reviews since bad reviews can sometimes be extremely damaging.

Understanding these reviews or the impact of your brand’s social proof is critical. At DataWeave, we help brands analyze online reviews to understand customer sentiment and adapt to feedback to enhance their experience with your brand.

2. Slow site speed

Site speed of the home page and checkout page on your D2C website can be a roadblock. Slow sections on your site like My Accounts, checkout, and cart are often overlooked when it comes to tracking site speed. Brands should run their checkout process at least once a month to ensure it’s fast, smooth, and bug-free. You can optimize images, strip unused scripts, implement HTTP/2, etc., to improve site speed and performance.

3. Poor customer service

69% of US consumers say customer service is very important when it comes to their loyalty to a brand. Guaranteeing a return customer is important to maintaining customer loyalty. While the focus is on the first purchase for new customers, your brand’s customer service will determine if first-time customers become repeat buyers. Loyal customers are known to spend 67% more on a brand product than new customers, even if they make up only 20% of your audience.

Types of customer service

4. Failure to send traffic to popular products

Be it your own D2C website, or when selling on a marketplace, you should be able to drive traffic to your best-selling products. One of the best ways for sending traffic to popular products on your website is to run paid ad campaigns and reach new audiences with influencer marketing on social media. Brands can also attract customers with organic media such as writing blogs and producing podcasts.

If you’re looking at driving traffic to key products on Amazon & other such marketplaces, sponsored ads are the way to go! Sponsored ads help your best-selling products more discoverable & helps shoppers find your brand with ease.

5. Inadequate pricing

Finding the right pricing strategy for your eCommerce business is crucial for optimizing sales and increasing revenue. The first step is to perform a competitor and historical data analysis to get a general idea of the market and then develop a pricing strategy that is the right fit for your products. Brands also have to ensure that they have dynamic pricing that can adjust according to supply and demand.

Our Digital Shelf solution at DataWeave helps brands track pricing for products across different pack sizes & variants across multiple online retailers and marketplaces helping them stay competitive in the market.

Optimize the right pricing strategy

6. Not targeting the right audience

One of the biggest mistakes that eCommerce businesses can make is targeting the wrong audience. It’s crucial for brands to define that target audience and then tailor products and marketing toward them. To increase sales as an eCommerce business, brands have to understand their audience, their interests, and how to appeal to their interest. Start by creating ideal buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. Also, segmenting audiences and targeting various groups based on buyer personas for ad campaigns will lead to better sales and revenue.

Targeting the right audience

7. Poor product descriptions

One of the major and common mistakes by eCommerce brands is using irrelevant product descriptions that are not optimized for the product. Customers don’t add products to their cart if they have difficulty finding sufficient information relevant to the product. Brands should write attention-grabbing descriptions optimized for SEO that are informative for the users. Here are some tips to optimize content to drive more eCommerce sales.

At DataWeave, our AI-Powered solution helps brands optimize content and visuals across product pages to improve discoverability.

8. Not having multiple revenue streams

Due to COVID-19, many businesses have had to modify or temporarily shut down their daily operations. However, finding new revenue streams can be a great way for eCommerce businesses to make up for the lost income and keep the company afloat. The best solution is to diversify your product offerings by offering commonly purchased products in bundles.

9. Low-quality visuals

Businesses fail to hit their sales targets because of low-quality visuals in product descriptions. High-quality and custom images can improve conversion rates from both marketplaces and image-based channels like social media. Social media users are attracted to exciting, high-quality content that conveys a desirable lifestyle. Brands should use high-resolution, attractive pictures of their products. Brands can also utilize UGC and influencers to help build up their content libraries.

Low-quality visuals

10. Wrong Assortment. Poor Availability

When your target audience lands on your eCommerce store and cannot find what they’re looking for, it leads to a poor shopping experience, but more importantly a lost sale for your brand! While you cannot have endless inventory, it’s essential to optimize your assortment & product availability to decrease the chances of your customer walking away. Assortment & availability optimization begins with analyzing current and historical inventory trends. If done manually, assortment can be a time-consuming task. A healthy assortment can increase retail sales by creating a positive shopping experience for your customers and encouraging them to return to your store again.

11. Bad eCommerce UX

Offering a sub-standard user experience is a common reason why eCommerce businesses find it difficult to increase sales. According to a study, the conversions can fall by up to 7% for every one-second delay in page load time. Businesses can use a countdown clock on their landing page and exit pop-ups to improve conversations. Your landing page and product descriptions should provide information that helps your users make a better and more informed decision.

Conclusion

If your eCommerce’s business sales are tanking, improving site speed, customer service, social proof, and product descriptions are some of the levers you can pull to remedy the situation. Brands should also work on improving online reviews & ratings, availability, assortment, visuals, and website UX to improve customer experience. These steps not only increase loyalty but also improve customer retention.

Need help tracking online pricing for your eCommerce business? Or decoding customer sentiment from reviews they’ve left for your products? Or do you need insights into your product assortment and availability? Sign up for a demo with our team to know how DataWeave can help!

April 13, 2022
eCommerce Performance Analytics for CPG Private Label
The combination of economic uncertainty, inflation, and perceived affordability has increased consumer’s willingness to buy and try more private label products, challenging National brands to differentiate their eCommerce strategies, especially those related to price positioning, in other ways.

Our previously released report, Inflation Accelerates Private Label Share and Penetration, confirmed 8 out of 10 brands with the highest SKU count carried across all grocery retailer websites to be private label, signaling the strength of their digital Share of Voice. Given the growing shift in consumer preference toward private label brands, we are providing access to the latest trends seen from September 2021 through March 2022. Below you will find a summary of what the data revealed about the growing presence of private label brands on the Digital Shelf.

Private Label Account and Category Penetration

We analyzed private label penetration at an account level to understand which private label brands have the greatest presence on retailer digital shelves, and to see which retailers may be leaving product assortment opportunities on the table.

Private Label Penetration Across Retail Grocer Websites

As a retailer, it is important to understand how your private label penetration stacks up against the industry average at a category level, especially given the performance tracked for retailers included within our analysis and the vast number of SKUs they offer online (over 20,000).

Private Label Penetration by Category Across Retail Grocer Websites

The Private Label and National Brand Price Gap Widens

Private label brands tried out of necessity mid-pandemic increased in popularity as grocery prices continued to rise, providing an opportunity for retailers to increase brand affinity and loyalty for their online shoppers. Retailers alike were able to keep affordability at the forefront of their strategies and maintain a price gap of 23% or more, despite inflationary pressures to increase prices.

Private Label / National Brand Price Gap by Retailer

Looking at the results at a category level, we can see that Meat is the only category found within our analysis where private label brands are priced higher than National brands at an average of 8% greater. The Alcohol & Beverages category tends to always see the greatest price gap between private label and National brands given the price variances by unit (ranging from under $10 to over $100), in this case averaging a 148% price gap.

Private Label & National Brand Price Gap by Category

Private Label Total Basket Value Comparison Across Retailers

While SKU-level pricing is extremely important to product strategy, for a retailer, it is equally as important to be as mindful of the total basket value even more so now as consumers further their private label loyalty across various categories. A few SKU-level missteps in pricing decisions can exacerbate cart abandonment and negatively impact shopper loyalty in a world where prices can be compared instantly in the palm of your hand.

Based on our analysis, Walmart and H-E-B private label products offered the lowest priced total basket of goods at $42.90 and $45.06 respectively, whereas AmazonFresh and Safeway offered the highest total at $73.19 and $69.52 respectively.

Private Label Item Level Price Comparison by Retailer

Inflation-driven Price Changes are on the Rise with Room to Grow

Based on the 20,000+ SKUs analyzed, we saw a continual price increase every month since September 2021 when comparing future monthly prices to those we tracked in September. The greatest price increase happened in March 2022 at 12.5% on average, however, there are still 48% of SKUs that have yet to see a price increase even as inflationary pressures rise.

When viewing the split between National and private label brand price increases in March 2022 versus September 2021, we saw National brands increased prices on average by 13% where private label brand prices only increased an average of 7%.

Private Label & National Brand Price Change (%)

Price decreases are still occurring across all categories, despite inflation, but to varying degrees ranging from 5% for Deli items to 17% for Dairy & Eggs. Within the Dairy & Eggs and Pantry categories, private label brands reduced prices for an additional 10% of total SKUs compared to National brands.

The greatest category of opportunity for price increases within private label were found within Beauty & Personal Care with 67% of private label products yet to see a price change since September 2021.

Price Change (%) by Category and Brand Type

Private Label Price Change Correlation to Product Availability

The category with the greatest magnitude of price increase seen within private label brands occurred within Baby at 16.3% followed by Home at 14.3% on average. Private label products within Home and Baby categories were also showing the lowest availability rates, 75.9% and 79.5% respectively, indicating a high demand for these items even as prices increased.

The private label categories with the smallest price increase on average were Dairy & Eggs at 2.4% and Other Foods and Pantry at 3.4% and 3.6%, respectively.

Private Label Price Change Magnitude & Availability

While in many accounts both private label and National brands struggled with stock availability in March 2022, National brand availability is much lower (around 10% on average) than private label availability.

H-E-B had the lowest overall product availability at 76% across both private label and National brands on average. Only Walmart had lower availability for Private Label at 75% compared to 93% for National brands, but they also had the greatest price gap between private label and National brands.

Private Label & National Brand Product Stock Availability

The Future of eCommerce Growth for Private Label

Our greatest learning from this analysis is that it’s time for retailers to start thinking and planning more like the National brands they carry when it comes to positioning their private label brands for success. Successful retailers are taking this time to reset their private-label strategies and transfer short-term switching behavior into long-term customer loyalty.

Retailers playing catch up have the opportunity to address some of the gaps highlighted throughout this analysis, for example, relative to pricing and assortment changes. Below are some of the highlighted opportunities:
- Though inflation is driving price hikes, more than 50% of products analyzed have yet to see a price increase indicating an opportunity to protect margin
- Narrowing the price gap between a store’s brand and National brands should not be the only focus as competitive private label brands are becoming a greater threat at a category and basket level
- Modifying and expanding assortments as demand increases for private label can improve customer retention and loyalty, especially for cross-shopping consumers
According to The Food Industry Association (FMI), only 20% of food retailers currently promote private brands on their homepages, and only 48% include detailed product descriptions indicating even more opportunities left on the table for retailers to optimize private label digital performance.

Many leading retailers are leveraging real-time digital marketplace insights and eCommerce analytics solutions like ours to further their online brand presence and optimize sales performance. This report highlights only a small sample of the types of near real-time insights we provide our clients to effectively build competing strategies, make smarter pricing and merchandising decisions, and accomplish eCommerce growth goals. Be sure to reach out to our Retail Analytics experts for access to more details regarding the above analysis.

For access to a previously recorded webinar presented in partnership with the Private Label Manufacturers Association and conducted by DataWeave’s President and COO, Krish Thyagarajan, click here.
April 12, 2022
The Rise of On-Demand Grocery Delivery after the Pandemic

Before the pandemic, the grocery industry was set around brick-and-mortar stores, and there was a slow movement towards on-demand grocery. Online grocery delivery was still considered a peripheral channel. However, grocery shoppers started turning to on-demand platforms since the onset of COVID-19. According to Acosta’s report, since the pandemic, 45% of customers prefer online grocery shopping over physical stores.

COVID-19 drastically accelerated the online grocery delivery trend, increasing 10% and 15% of total grocery sales during the peak COVID-19 time. In the U.S., online grocery shopping reached nearly $90 billion in sales in 2020, increasing by more than $30 billion.

In this article, you’ll learn about the early pioneers of online grocery delivery in the U.S., the modern players, and the impact of COVID-19 on grocery trends.

Early pioneers of online grocery delivery

Early pioneers of online grocery delivery

In the late 1990s, consumers had just started ordering products online. Online grocery shopping was an early area of focus. It offered lucrative rewards to high-spending consumers, increased convenience, and saved them time. Peapod, founded in 1989 by brothers Andrew and Thomas Parkinson, was the first online grocery delivery service. Back when they started, users had to install software from CD-ROMs and then place orders. Though it took years to become a well-known name in the industry, Peapod is still in business.

Webvan and HomeGrocer.com were two other early pioneers of online grocery delivery that started in 1996 in California and 1997 in Washington respectively. Webvan had a successful launch in California, and they had aggressive expansion plans to operate in 26 major cities around the United States. However, the company filed for bankruptcy less than two years later. HomeGrocer.com quickly created the infrastructure needed to support the business, including a fleet of vans and a huge warehouse. They had impressive early growth, and sales reached over $1 million a day by mid-2000. They expanded into other markets, including California, Georgia, Oregon, Texas, and Illinois.

Modern players of the on-demand grocery delivery

Modern players of the on-demand grocery delivery

Online Grocery Trends Post-Pandemic

When COVID-19 first began to engulf the world, supermarkets and grocery delivery platforms like Amazon Fresh and Instamart became overwhelmed with huge demands. To handle the surge of online orders, stores had to make drastic changes to accommodate the switch to on-demand delivery requests. Popular grocery delivery brands had to introduce waitlists and online queues for new customers. According to a poll, 53% of shoppers would continue online grocery shopping because they had a good experience, indicating that the on-demand grocery trend will continue post-pandemic.

Mckinsey Grocery Report

As shoppers prefer more digital channels in their path to purchase, the on-demand grocery trend is becoming much more significant for both consumers and brands. According to a McKinsey and company survey, frozen fruits, health care items, fresh fruits and vegetables, packaged foods, household care items, beverages, and deli meats categories are likely to remain popular among U.S. consumers post-pandemic. Meanwhile, CoreSight Research found that fresh fruits and vegetables were the biggest bestsellers from 2020-to 2021 followed by fresh dairy, meat, eggs, frozen food, and bread and baked goods.

Why Grocery Shoppers are going digital

Online ordering offers a more personalized experience to shoppers as they get recommendations for products that are often bought together. When paired with data analysis and AI-powered algorithms, grocery stores could work on targeted marketing and offer quick delivery services.

1. Flexibility

On-demand grocery shopping offers customers a wide range of delivery options, including subscription services, buy online pick up in-store, click and collect, option-based pricing, and much more. This offers choice and accessibility to modern customers looking for speed and convenience.

2. Convenience

With the increasing focus on social distancing and safety, shoppers started to rely on delivery services rather than waiting in long queues and risking exposure. The focus and priority of grocery shoppers shifted from discounts and pricing to convenience, speed, and safety. Online grocery shopping order methods also differ by generation. 40% of millennials prefer to shop groceries on mobile, and 52% prefer computers. Similarly, 66% of Gen X prefer to shop on computers, and only 27% prefer to shop on smartphones.

Grocery Shoppers are going digital

3. Speed

The fierce competition in the on-demand grocery delivery space has led to small delivery times. Startups like GoPuff (30 minutes), and Jiffy (15 minutes) are competing with the big boys like Walmart and Amazon Fresh to deliver groceries in under an hour. Quick delivery options like two-hour delivery and same-day delivery have made it easier for customers to shop for fresh produce. Customers can quickly order a few items for a specific recipe and get it delivered within a few hours.

4. Multiple payment methods

At store checkouts, cash and card are the only two acceptable options. Customers prefer to have more options in today’s modern world. Online grocery shopping makes buying easier by offering multiple payment options like PayPal, credit/debit cards, and monthly payment plans that negate the delivery fees for each delivery.

How to successfully run a Grocery Delivery Business?

The increasing demand for speed and convenience puts pressure on the grocery industry that faces inventory issues like fresh produce and product availability. However, the benefit of online grocery delivery services is that it provides insight into the end-to-end view of the customer journey. Grocery delivery brands can use the data to design services and models that meet customer demand and minimize costs across the supply and distribution chain.

If you’re a Grocery Delivery company and want to track your delivery time, or product catalogue so you can boost sales with an in-demand product assortment, or you want to drive more revenue & margin by making sure your products are priced right v/s your competition, reach out to us at DataWeave! Sign up for a demo with our team to know how we can help you optimize your online sales.

April 5, 2022
Critical Features of an Effective Price Intelligence Tool For Retailers

In the age of a mature eCommerce and omni-channel retail ecosystem, pricing is the premier competitive battleground. It’s both the biggest offensive weapon to capture market share – and the biggest vulnerability if you stumble. In fact, a recent Statista survey revealed that 70% of US online users prioritize competitive pricing in their digital shopping choices. Yet most retailers still struggle with consistent, profitable pricing often replying on instincts rather than data-led intelligence.

That’s where Pricing Intelligence (PI) comes in. PI is a fast-evolving discipline powering data-driven, continually optimized pricing strategies to help merchants make rapid, surgical adjustments that attract customers and protect margins. Most retailers are aware of Pricing Intelligence tools, but they miss out on getting one that serves their needs and proves its ROI consistently.

Because of course, not all pricing intelligence solutions are created equal. Here’s top features retailers looking to invest in a Pricing Intelligence tool should look out for.

1. Accurate Product Matching

Of course, accurate pricing data is table stakes for any PI solution – The core premise of any pricing intelligence tool is enabling robust product tracking and price monitoring of your own catalog against the competition.

So, a PI tool must take care of matching each of your product across all other sources, so that you can make a straightforward comparison and take actions.

But since the internet is not a one standard entity and even the same or similar products can have different titles, descriptions, specs and images, most retailers end up capturing incomplete or inaccurate data completely undermining their intelligence. A good Pricing Intelligence tool like DataWeave’s should be able to leverage Similarity Matching and AI-based image tracking to bring more products under product matches and present a more complete picture.

2. Width of pricing types and factoring in real net effective prices

Product accuracy must extend far beyond just basic “landed” or “street” pricing and cover more types of specialized pricing situations. A robust pricing intelligence tool should automatically detect and handle nuanced mechanics like:

– Bundled/kit/packaged pricing

– Pricing regulated by manufacturer policies (MSRP, MAP, etc.)

– Complex promotional structures (% off, BOGO, BXGX, etc.)

– Inventory-level or stocking threshold-based pricing

– Zonal/regional taxes, fees and price variations

– Segment-based pricing for members, loyalty tiers, etc.

– Pricing tiers or breaks based on volume/purchase quantities

Properly capturing and classifying these additional pricing nuances by retail vertical is key. Otherwise you’ll have major blind spots and inaccuracies that leave you open to being undercut or overpriced compared to real-world market dynamics.

3. Real-Time, Continuous Monitoring and High Data Update Frequency

Data points like product prices and offers get stale fairly quickly. Ideally, we want to see real time data. Real time is not achievable at scale, or might even be an overkill in many cases.

However, an effective PI tool must present up-to-date data to the extent possible. Based on requirement this can vary from a day to a few hours thus helping the business stay ahead of the price curve.

4. Scalable Coverage and Contextual Enrichment For Full Product Information

For many retailers, one of the biggest pricing intelligence challenges is scaling comprehensive, accurate monitoring across their full product catalog and relevant competitor ecosystem. This is especially true for those operating regionally or with multiple banners/brands.

You need robust data collection capabilities to ingest and process pricing data on everything from big box retailers and national sellers all the way down to small mom-and-pop shops that may only sell locally – but could still impact your pricing perception.

A best-in-class PI solution should have the ability to dynamically monitor millions of products and tens of thousands of competitor sources globally, processing all those inputs in a normalized, unified way. Additionally, your PI solution needs to be flexible to adapt seasonal or special requirements – whether that involves tracking key value items more frequently, or getting updates on pricing changes during festive seasons.

But beyond just raw data collection scale, leading PI solutions also enrich and add context around that pricing data to make it far more actionable through technologies like:

– Machine learning models to extract intelligent insights

– Semantic processing to identify nuanced pricing mechanics

– Competitive product knowledge graphs to map relationships

– Location data appending for geographic/zonal context

This enrichment bridges the gap between simple “list prices” and real-world factors like localized promotions, inventory levels, demand elasticity and other variables that should be driving more nuanced, profitable pricing decisions.

5. Pricing Opportunities

A good PI tool should present data at different levels of granularity: category, sub-category, brand, and individual product. This helps the category/merchandizing team or the pricing analysts to surgically strike problem areas. For instance, when you are tracking 1000s or even 100s of products, it’s next to impossible to go over every product and take pricing decisions.

Furthermore, with large, diverse product catalogs, it’s impossible for category managers to manually monitor pricing on every SKU. Your pricing intelligence tool must automatically analyze and highlight prioritized pricing opportunities where action is needed – enabling efficient pricing decisions at a glance.

6. Historical Pricing

“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” But they also say, history can be a useful predictor of the future. Nowhere is it truer than in competitive price intelligence.

An analysis of historical data almost always shows a trend that can be capitalized on for competitive pricing. A good PI tool stores and presents historical pricing data in a useful manner.

7. “It’s not [just] about the money”

Retail is a highly competitive and commoditized sector. So, price is an important factor for a consumer when making a decision to buy a product. Having said that, as a retailer, you don’t always want to compete on pricing.

You may want to compete through better packaging, or giving the user more choice (variants/colours/sizes), or better SLAs. This is where a Price Intelligence tool needs to go beyond just pricing. It needs to capture and present all other relevant data points associated with a product.

8. Uncluttered User Experience

Any tool built for a user needs to be usable, intuitive, and uncluttered. More so for busy managers who need to take several decisions quickly day on day. A Price Intelligence tool is in essence a Data Product. A data product is built on top of a lot of data; however, a good data product is one “where data recedes to the background”.

A data product is not one that delivers a lot of data, but one that delivers actionable data and insights based on data. Data presentation is also another important aspect. A good PI tool delivers the most important data points in formats and templates that a customer can easily consume.

DataWeave provides Competitive Intelligence for retailers, brands, and manufacturers. It is built on top of huge amounts of products data to provide features such as: pricing opportunities (and changes), assortment intelligence, gaps in catalogs, reporting and analytics, and tracking promotions, and product launches.

DataWeave is powered by distributed data crawling and processing engines that enables serving millions of data points around products data refreshed on a daily basis. This data is presented through dashboards, notifications, and reports. PriceWeave brings the ability to use BigData in compelling ways to retailers.

PriceWeave lets you track any number of products across any categories against your competitors. Still not convinced? Try us out. Just send us a request for a demo.

March 31, 2022