Click-and-Collect Presents New Opportunities for Retailers

Click-and-collect is revolutionizing the way customers purchase groceries — while keeping food retailers on their toes to establish a winning fulfillment model. To read the full article and learn how retailers can work to meet the demand, click here.

Needing to grocery shop but lacking the time and energy to do so is a common challenge. Hectic work and school schedules, more pressing errands to run and other time demands add up, leaving few opportunities to drive to a grocery store, fill up a cart, pay, load the groceries into your vehicle, drive home and, finally, unload them.

Fortunately, food retailers have devised a method to help ease the stress of time-constrained consumers seeking a quicker method of purchasing groceries. The click-and-collect model allows shoppers to compile and submit their grocery list online and have everything from frozen dinners to fresh produce hand-picked by store employees and delivered to the customers’ vehicles in the store parking lot. Customers who utilize the click-and-collect system can be home with their pantry and fridge stocked with groceries in as quickly as 30 minutes.

Today, 20 percent of Americans purchase at least some of their groceries online. That number is expected to grow to 70 percent by 2025. Click and collect shows that retailers are not ignoring that data; they’re using it in an attempt to meet changing customer expectations. Executed properly, a good click-and-collect experience could generate enhanced customer loyalty and spur future purchases. On the flip side of that coin, just one bad experience — for example, one bruised piece of produce or damaged frozen good — could lead to the loss of a customer and detriment to a brand name.

Another major challenge for retailers interested in implementing a click-and-collect option is the need for new (or improved) refrigeration and order fulfillment strategies to ensure proper temperature and humidity conditions are maintained throughout the entire process. Repeated door openings from workers going in and out of the cold storage or refrigerated locker may make it difficult to maintain food quality.

As a result, refrigeration systems must be equipped with robust capabilities to meet the following requirements:

• • Fast, effective temperature pull-downs
  • Controls to optimize system performance for peak use and energy savings
  • Demand-driven defrost schemes
  • Consistently reliable uptime
  • Energy-efficient operation methods
  • Always-on, remote monitoring capabilities to respond to potential issues
  • Diagnostics for early detection, prediction and fault prevention

Click-and-collect represents a tremendous growth opportunity for food retailers as consumers continue to embrace online grocery shopping. To succeed in this competitive arena, earn customer loyalty and capture market share, retailers will likely need to delight their customers with every transaction. Emerson is committed to giving retailers the tools they need to help deliver the freshest, highest-quality foods and make the most of this opportunity.

For more information, read the full article here.