Food Retailers Missing Out on Revenue Opportunities, New Study Reveals

OSF Digital releases the 2022 Grocery Omnichannel Retail Index with insights for food retailers and grocers to accelerate growth and increase loyalty

OSF Digital, an award-winning provider of digital transformation services to companies worldwide, announced the release of the 2022 Grocery Omnichannel Retail Index (ORI) findings in partnership with FMI, the Food Industry Association, and NRF, the National Retail Federation. The 2022 Grocery ORI reveals progress in omnichannel best practices; however, the majority of food retailers are still behind in developing integrated, seamless, and personalized experiences across all channels. This year’s benchmarking study identified opportunities in the shopper’s journey that can reduce friction and drive additional revenue and higher margins for grocers.

Due to the pandemic’s impact on digital acceleration, food retailers have made significant omnichannel investments. The implementation of best-practices criteria adoption has increased from 58% pre- pandemic to 65% today.

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The Grocery ORI report outlines key findings on the state of omnichannel and digital best practices in a constantly evolving industry. Along with insights from FMI, The Food Industry Association’s consumer research,  Grocery ORI offers insights on investment trends and the gaps in customer experiences today. Some of the key findings include:

• Many food retailers are not optimizing the digital experience to increase shopping cart size: While all food retailers in the Grocery ORI allow customers to edit quantity in cart, only 20% offer the ability to move items from the cart to a “save for later” status; whereas, in other retail verticals, the adoption rate is 40%. The option of having “save for later” gives the customer a way to find a previously considered product and simply add it to the cart instead of having to spend time searching for it.
  
  
• Only just over half (58%) of food retailers recommend additional products in the cart before checkout, up from 35% in 2019. Suggesting complimentary products or popular items bought together is an effective upselling tool to increase basket size and make the shopping experience more helpful for the customer.

“The Grocery Omnichannel Retail Index is a critical tool for food retailers with insights on how to place the customer at the center of the experiences they create,” said Gerard (Gerry) Szatvanyi, CEO of OSF Digital. “It can be used to identify gaps in customer experience in order to ease shopping, drive conversion, and increase loyalty. OSF Digital is committed to providing this comprehensive study to best serve the food retail and grocery industry.”

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“Food retailers suddenly had to become omnichannel masters in a short period of time and often had to piece together multiple, distinct programs and solutions to meet customer demands,” said Bernardine Wu, Executive Managing Director of Digital Strategy at OSF Digital. “The latest Grocery Omnichannel Retail Index reveals that there are fragmented shopping experiences and therefore opportunities to develop a stronger seamless customer experience.”

Launched in 2019, by FitForCommerce (now OSF Digital’s strategy division), Grocery ORI takes the pulse of digital commerce and omnichannel retail. The Grocery ORI examines how 50 leading U.S. food retailers perform across 100+ web, mobile, and in-store criteria. Grocery ORI depicts how leading North American grocers deliver on the omnichannel promise through detailed and extensive mystery shopping conducted by OSF Digital’s strategy consultants.