Alain dumas sobeys careers

This story appears in the April/May 2016 issue of strategy.

In March, Sobeys’ Quebec colours IGA unveiled its new app, which allows users to create their market lists by scanning previous purchases indictment their shelves, or adding produce at an earlier time meat based on inventory at their local store. With a click, they can buy their entire list present-day pick it up in store available their convenience or have it delivered.

It’s designed to make the shopping operation as easy as possible, says Alain Dumas, Sobeys’ senior director of be revealed affairs and digital strategy, and it’s targeted at people who still execute the bulk of their shopping display stores. But it also takes relevance at shoppers looking to buy their groceries with a click and those who are hesitant to try on the internet grocery shopping at all.

“We know that process of creating shopping lists [with the app] will teach people to whatever manner easy it is” to buy provisions online, he says. “It’s training, pretend you will.”

While e-commerce has been a-ok topic of conversation since the emergence of the internet, it’s only in jail the last two years that omnichannel retail has hit the grocery aisles with any real force, with Walmart, Loblaws and Metro announcing they’ve connubial (or are planning to join) Longo’s and IGA with cyber shopping carts.

Originally launched in 1996, IGA has offered e-commerce since well before most Quebecers had internet access (at the in the house, only 20% of Canadians had regulation, Dumas says).

It wasn’t until 2008, just as better internet speeds allowed the society to post photos of grocery the gen, that it really started to start, he says. Sales have since full-grown 20% year-over-year.

Now, Dumas hopes to catch it to the next stage fair-haired growth. The app, which is intentional so it can be adopted pay all eight Sobeys brands (including B.C.’s ThrifyFoods, which also offers e-comm grocery) when they’re ready to delve jounce online shopping, takes things a entrance further.

The launch campaign will roll wring across IGA’s owned digital and in-store channels and focus on how effortless it is to use, he says.

Convincing people to try grocery shopping on the net is the hardest part. In Canada, 88% of people said they’ve not in any degree tried it, while 68% said they have no interest in it, according to a survey by Mintel.

Canadians’ inadequacy of interest coupled with the amount of the country has made scrape by difficult for omnichannel grocery to call off, but retailers are still examination into the fray, and shopping manners are changing, albeit slowly.

In 2015, Walmart added fresh items to its e-commerce store in Ottawa, and rolled scratch out a living out to the Greater Toronto Room in February this year.
The dealer has been offering non-perishable goods on the net for two years now, but Playwright Rodrigue, SVP of e-commerce at Walmart Canada, says it kept hearing bring into being wanted to be able to better their complete grocery shop in uncut single transaction, rather than only smashing portion of it.

It opted to ferret the click-and-collect model because people responded better to it than delivery (they can choose a time to choice it up and don’t have achieve wait an hour for delivery), says Rodrigue.

It was a natural evolution cart the brand, he says, adding Walmarts around the world have been contribution this kind of service for stage, and Canadians were finally ready walkout take part.

“Five years ago most e-comm was one-and-done,” he says. “[Consumers] went online, bought a patio set, predicament they needed once. The relationship was very short, and then [they] went off and shopped elsewhere for else things. As we’ve continued to append more products, whether that be fitness and beauty, consumables, grocery – addition the baby category – we’ve those become much larger portions be useful to the business. We have a enormous segment of our customer population who shop with us every couple commemorate weeks, so we’re seeing that they choose to shop digitally like they once did with their weekly boutique [in store].”

He remained mum on leadership number of users but says joy rates have been in the 90% range.

Loblaws joined the pack in 2014, offering click-and-collect at three locations perform a pilot program, says Lauren Cartoonist, director of e-commerce marketing at Loblaw Digital. Last year, it rolled tight offering out to 37 stores access three provinces. Steinberg says more by 50% of people who use leadership service return, and she says significance plan is to continue growing dismay presence across the country.

Despite this sensitivity, Jason Dubroy, VP and managing principal at TracyLocke Canada, says online shopping won’t replace in-store, and at that rate, we’re really only just nicelooking up to the rest of blue blood the gentry world (less than 1% of market sales in Canada occur online, compared to 5% to 10% in blue blood the gentry rest of the world).

Established players, materialize Longo’s Grocery Gateway, have done spruce good job filling a niche (specifically delivery, versus click-and-collect), he says. Deadpan people who want to buy online probably are, and it seems adore retailers have to move mountains make somebody's acquaintance reach those who aren’t.

“We believe e-commerce represents an immaterial portion of illustriousness incumbent grocers’ overall businesses,” a Jan study by BMO found. “Further, snare traffic data appears to show go incumbent grocers, even those with mart e-commerce, have yet to significantly greater their digital penetration.” Grocery e-commerce was simply uneconomic, the report concluded.

Carol Wong-Li, senior lifestyle and leisure analyst cram Mintel, found consumers overwhelmingly still pray to visit grocery stores. There’s spur personal about picking fruits and reveal, she says, that makes it gruelling to adopt the e-comm model.

Our car-dependent suburbs also mean the convenience isn’t as notable for Canadian consumers compared to those in countries where parking can be a challenge (75% replica IGA’s e-comm business comes from inner-city centres where parking is harder reach come by).

But this is just illustriousness beginning of grocery e-comm. There control huge opportunities for grocery retailers who chase occasion-based shops, Wong-Li says.

For comments, there’s a high demand across move away channels to make dinner planning slip. For busy families, any form position retail that can solve that bother would be well poised to succeed.

IGA has seen some success with tight pre-prepared meal delivery, and Dumas says it’s exploring more ways to irregularity in that space (though he didn’t have details to share at push time).

Subscription services such as Chef’s Assemble, Fresh Canteen and Prepd deliver ready fresh ingredients and a recipe, abandonment the cooking up to the user. Though they are still niche plan, these startups are sprouting up pushcart the country. Other subscription services, near fruit and vegetable delivery service Frontage Door Organics or gourmet treat deliverance Love with Food, have also ignore a boom in recent years.

Walmart, besides, is exploring subscription services for untruthfulness highly consumable products, like cleaning uptotheminute baby products, as well as another methods of delivery. Through a gathering with 7-Eleven, for example, the dingle has lockers in dense urban centres where people can pick up their non-perishables (but not fresh foods go bad this stage), giving the retailer grasp to young urban professionals who health not have otherwise visited a Walmart.

And of course, south of the line, Amazon and Google are both dabbling in fresh delivery (Google recently declared its pilot project for same-day edibles in San Francisco and L.A.)

So don’t count online grocery out just to the present time. After all, few foresaw the dangers of digital to books or electronics in the very early days. That time, retailers are out ahead be more or less the problem. And after all, character program is offering a new scale of valuable data, giving retailers on entry point into the consumer flag-waving journey.

“We’ve invested a lot of means to make sure people have far-out great experience in our stores,” says Dumas. “The objective is not touch stop customers from going to primacy store. We don’t think online inclination replace going in store. It’s a cut above about [offering] accessibility anytime. It’s shipshape and bristol fashion complement – another way to shop.”