Apr 10, 2019

Year-Three Initiative Delivers Omnichannel Roadmap for Grocery Industry
Through Broadened Roster of Partners

ARLINGTON, VA – Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN)Omnichannel 7 Imperatives announced today an expansion of its, “Digitally Engaged Food Shopper” study with the delivery of an omnichannel roadmap for the food marketing industry. Through a broadened roster of advisory partners, this year’s output will bring to life a set of actionable tools and resources to enable FMI members to work toward achieving business profitably in today’s challenging omnichannel landscape. Building on FMI and Nielsen’s strategic alliance and multi-year initiative, this effort will marry analysis with actionable items for companies to implement, today.    

Over the past three years, Nielsen and FMI’s Digitally Engaged Food Shopper effort has worked to uncover insights on current and future digital shopping behaviors within the food retail marketplace, bringing increased visibility into this developing landscape. Through this study, in 2017 the companies predicted that consumer spend on online grocery shopping could reach $100 billion (inclusive of food + beverage and CPG products, only); and in 2018, the study predicted that in as few as five-seven years, 70 percent of consumers will be doing at least some grocery shopping online.

The 2019 Digitally Engaged Food Shopper initiative brings a new set of action items with new perspectives from AT Kearney, NPD, Precima, Eversight, Mi9 Retail and RSi. Collectively, these tools and recommended steps forward will convert the seven operational imperatives which netted from the three-year analysis, into vetted business applications.

“We’re effectively reducing the learning curve and helping our members understand the technology landscape in order to quickly create their own and/or partner with solution providers and compete,” Mark Baum, chief collaboration officer at FMI, said. “I describe this initiative as a ‘choose your own adventure’ within the context of a company’s digital self-assessment and how our members want to design and execute their digital strategies in this fast-paced environment.”

Through downloadable whitepaper reports the following seven focus areas will be available within the 2019 Digitally Engaged Grocery Shoppers: Executive Workbook:

#1 Align Organizational Structures for Omnichannel Success: Integrate digital offerings in parallel with brick-and-mortar operations.

Partner company: AT Kearney. “The new silo-busting, outcome-oriented ways of working to consistently succeed, the company must focus analytics on outcomes while giving more functions real-time access to customer and operational insights.”  

#2 Address Discrepant Datasets:  Scrub master data files for discrepancies; strength in data and accuracy is a critical component to successfully support online sale efforts.

Partner company: Nielsen. “This is about data management underpinning every customer-facing decision and all the downstream process in the shopper end-to-end experience including back office supply, fulfillment, and delivery, with an ideal end game of managing much more in the real-time activation process and not at the historical perspective.”

#3 Integrate Forecasts to Increase Operational Efficiencies: Integrate online and offline forecasting so the right amount of inventory is available to meet orders through all channels.

Partner company: RSi. “Managing and maximizing on-shelf availability in this new omnichannel world will become mission critical for all the major players in the retail ecosystem.”

#4 Optimize Shopper Insights: Bring retailer and manufacturer shopper information together into a single, comprehensive view of customer insights.

Partner companies: Precima & NPD. “From the shopper’s perspective, a retailer who employs coherent shopper insights will present a more consistently dependable experience and an appealing value story.”

#5 Improve Marketing and Promotions: Optimize the management of omnichannel marketing and promotions.

Partner company: Nielsen. “While annual planning and strategic investments are still key to pursuing long-term growth, today’s media and consumption environment demand agility and adaptability.”

#6 Merge Digital and In-Store Shelf Capabilities: Manage and unify the physical shelf and its digital counterpart to create a valuable, seamless shopping experience in this post-omnichannel world.

Partner company: Eversight. “The digital in-store shelf is rapidly becoming both dynamic and personal, unlocking agility in pricing and promotions powered by real-time experimentation.

#7 Amplify platform landscape and options: Specialty solutions are vital enhancements to planning and e-commerce and offer an improved shopper experience.

Partner company: Mi9 Retail. “Although there are a variety of enterprise-class and other solutions available, grocers need to pay special attention and focus on those that enable retailers to deliver contextual e-commerce experiences, amplify a retailer’s business agility and are built to evolve.”

Baum continued: “These companies, working closely together and with us, represent a natural evolution of the Nielsen and FMI “Digitally Engaged Food Shopper” study and bring insights and a collective resource to help the food industry move forward effectively and efficiently on implementing omnichannel success.” 

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