The Grocer: Smartphones are the best way to encourage shopper engagement

The grocer’s philosophy when it comes to building loyalty is to encourage one more shopping trip or one more product purchase. Retailers and grocers use loyalty programmes to collect data from previous purchases, which is used to personalise offers for relevant products and drive footfall back to store. Whilst this technique has its successes, it’s difficult relying on the past to predict the future. It’s important to evolve beyond predicting, and actually engage with consumers, offering something truly compelling to change shopper behaviour.

The best way to encourage engagement is through the smartphone. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated search engines, we can easily search for any product and instantly receive directions to the nearest store. However, once inside the store entrance, all mobile enablement ends and the consumer must either hunt for their product themselves or ask a customer advisor for help.

Continue reading Tim’s article in The Grocer here, where he anticipates future scenarios of voice technology and smartphone enablement entering the food and beverage markets, allowing retailers to engage with customer’s movements, rather than simply predict them.