However, this insistence on trying to force unnatural behaviour by driving consumers to FMCG brand websites is puzzling.
It means brand owners must independently invest heavily in online and traditional media to target potential customers and get them to visit their website where they can then engage them further in the brand, sign-them-up and capture consumer data.
All of these benefits can be more easily achieved, and for a tiny fraction of the cost, by taking a more natural route aligned with shoppers’ behaviour and attitudes.
Brands share shelf space in store and in Google search listings, so why not share space with other brands on an aggregated promotional website?
Any snobbery that pooling brands together online may be somehow demeaning to the brand fails to appreciate just how sophisticated and creative multi-brand promotional sites can be.
The right digital platform will offer advertisers a positive brand association as well as all of the same engagement tools valued by brand owners running promotions on their own websites, all of which can also be combined with a printable coupon to drive measurable in-store sales.
In the FMCG sector, winning new customers is a challenge. Finding and engaging them doesn’t need to be hard work, idly frittering money on expensive online and traditional media, but rather responding to what shoppers truly need and where they are already spending time online.
Jo Malvern, product and marketing director, beforeIshop
I would tend to agree with this interesting idea. To an extent some of this is happening already through some of the sites offering brand coupons on web. However there is an opportunity for FMCG brands to share same place online.
I think FMCG brands will be forced to do something like this to counter tough competition from private labels. In last few years, grocery retailers in the US have successfully increased private labels share. Economic situation is greatly aiding private label penetration since they are lower priced than FMCG brands. Another trend in the recent years is that private label items are matching the quality of a FMCG brand. Hence FMCG’s will continue to struggle to get new customers while they continue to loose market share to the private labels. Thus they will have to come-up with innovative ideas to deliver values to consumers and one such idea could be what is explained in this article.
My comments are more on making online channel viable for grocery business:
Grocery business is still trying to find an effective online (end to end) sales model. As distance tend to make delivery expensive, grocers need to look for taking these to place of work where they can deliver multiple packages at single location. Pick up from store seems to be the best grocers are able to offer at this time.