Boris Planer, Founder and Managing Director of Future Consulting, joins Natalie to discuss the news that Amazon is terminating its online grocery service in Germany.
They discuss:
What went wrong for Amazon Fresh in Germany, what does this tell us about Amazon’s global grocery strategy, and where next? (It’s all about the partnerships.)
Inherent challenges of grocery retailing in Germany. Did you know that 98% of German consumers live within 10 minutes of a discounter?!
The Amazon Effect – how competitors have raised their e-commerce game.
Implications for Amazon Fresh internationally. The news follows a similar move in the UK earlier this year when Amazon scrapped Fresh outside of London and Manchester.
Why you need to know more about Rohlik, the Czech grocery delivery start-up that has just announced a partnership with Amazon and is aiming to launch in 10 European cities over the next 6 years.
Boris Planer is a retail thought leader, speaker and consultant based in Frankfurt, Germany. He is the founder and managing director of Future Consulting, a consultancy supporting international retailers, suppliers and tech businesses in their efforts to spot trends early on and take new market opportunities effectively. Boris has 25 years of experience in retail insight and consultancy, including at retail insight group Planet Retail/Edge by Ascential and WGSN, the world’s leading consumer trend forecasters. He is also a speaker at Zukunftsinstitut, the Institute for the Future based in Frankfurt and Vienna.
At the recent Manhattan Exchange in Barcelona, Natalie had the opportunity to sit down with Pieter Van den Broecke, EMEA Leader, Supply Chain Commerce Strategies, at Manhattan Associates. They discussed opportunities with AI, rethinking the post-purchase experience and achieving a truly unified commerce offering.
AI isn’t exactly a recent development. Why all the hype now?
You’re right. In fact, during World War II, artificial intelligence was used to mobilise troops!
Retailers have used AI for decades to help them make decisions in a world of constraints. A machine can only produce 100 bottles of champagne in an hour. A ship moving goods from China to the port of Barcelona takes three weeks. Retail operations are all about fulfilling demand to the consumer, while dealing with many real-life physical constraints and uncertainty. AI helps businesses to work around those constraints and make sure that the right product is getting into the hands of the right consumer at the right time.
Generative AI is, of course, what’s new. By providing insights based on collective memory, Gen AI helps operational engineers to design the right solutions for the business. Gen AI can assist in building solutions by taking over configuration tasks, testing, and even coding certain elements of the system.
Pieter Van den Broecke, EMEA Leader, Supply Chain Commerce Strategies, Manhattan Associates
I can see how Gen AI drives operational efficiencies for retailers. But how does it improve the experience for the customer?
When we talk about the online customer experience, we’re really referring to the “order and fulfilment experience”. When customers change their minds or when things go wrong, they want an immediate solution and ideally through self-service. This is where Gen AI comes in. Gen AI chatbots, for example, can deal with very complex queries in real-time. A customer simply needs to say, “Hey, I placed an order a week ago and I’m still waiting on delivery.” Or “Remind me what items I ordered again – was it a blue shirt or a red shirt?”. So it’s very natural, personalised and, most importantly, it’s contextually and factually correct.
In those cases where the Gen AI chatbot can’t solve a customer query, a conversation summary is produced and passed on to a real human being. This allows the customer support team to continue the conversation without having to go through the questions again, saving both the retailer and customer time.
Let’s talk about the post-purchase experience. What are the benefits of allowing customers to modify their online orders?
Sometimes we change our minds and need to cancel or change an order. By facilitating late order cancellations, ideally before the order has been shipped, the retailer is firstly improving the experience for the customer by removing the need for a return and also by being refunded immediately. The retailer benefits by keeping the product in stock and commercially available, plus the delivery (and potentially return) costs are eliminated. And of course, it’s a more sustainable way of retailing if we don’t have to deliver something that would ultimately be returned. It really is a win for the consumer, a win for the planet and a win for the retailer.
What exactly do we mean by unified commerce and can you give us an example?
Unified commerce is putting customers at the centre of the retail brand experience. Customers don’t want to think in channels and retailers shouldn’t be forcing that on them, but it still happens too often today.
As a retail organisation, it’s critical to really think from the ground up with a unified commerce mindset. You have to embrace technology with your heart and mind. It’s not an afterthought. Your digital core has to be strong, at any level of the organization, and with the consumer in the centre.
You might have heard about a concept called Omnicart, which is a shopping basket that can be filled digitally. If you opt to collect the goods in-store, that digital shopping basket then becomes a physical one, unifying the customer’s journey. This means that orders initiated in any channel can be completed, returned or exchanged in any other channel, and it also gives store associates greater upsell/cross-sell opportunities.
There’s a huge opportunity to unify promotional activity here. Traditionally, promotions have been very channel-specific but technology is breaking down those silos. So, if a customer sees a 10% discount online for an item, this can also be applied to an in-store purchase along with any other discounts on different items. I think this is a really nice example of stretching people’s minds on what unified commerce can look like in practice.
In one sentence, what is the most important thing that retailers can do after reading this?
Identify the biggest friction that you create for your customer and start addressing this immediately.
This is an abridged version of Pieter’s interview with Natalie on the Retail Disrupted podcast. Listen to the full episode here.
Natalie discusses the launch of Amazon Haul, the retailer’s new Temu-like storefront where most items are under $10 and delivery takes up to two weeks. She also unpacks the reasons behind Vinted’s success – what consumer needs is it tapping into and what are the implications for the wider retail sector? And, finally, Natalie shares her thoughts on the explosion of advent calendars. What is driving the trend and what can retailers learn from it?
[4:20] Is Amazon terminating its online grocery service in Germany?
[6:08] Amazon Haul launch
[9:00] Vinted and the rise of pre-loved
[15:10] Advent calendars – history and why retailers of all varieties are jumping on the advent calendar bandwagon
Links:
Episode 45: Amazon Must Disrupt Itself, July 2024. Natalie and Miya explore whether Amazon and Temu can co-exist and thoughts on the (then) rumoured plans to launch an ultra-low price storefront.
The Black Friday deals started as early as Halloween here in the UK (yes, really – see Boots, John Lewis, Currys) and mainland Europe isn’t far behind. On today’s episode, Natalie speaks to Sander Roose, CEO and Founder of Omnia Retail, the Amsterdam-based company behind Europe’s first dynamic pricing software.
Sander and Natalie explore Black Friday 2024 trends in great depth as well as the Ticketmaster/Oasis disaster and why it’s important to distinguish between dynamic and surge pricing, and finally what retailers need to do to optimize their pricing strategies.
More on Sander:
Sander Roose is a seasoned retail expert and entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in retail and e-commerce. He holds a MSc degree in Industrial Engineering & Management Science from the Eindhoven University of Technology, where he graduated cum laude. After starting his career at Procter & Gamble, Sander became an entrepreneur: Harvest (acquired by OLX, part of Naspers), Commerce Squared (e-com strategy consultant) and now Omnia Retail.
Find out more about the Retail Disrupted Podcast by visiting retaildisrupted.com
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Live from Barcelona, Green Retail World’s Editor Ben Sillitoe joins Natalie on the podcast to share what they learned at Manhattan Exchange this week. They explore how generative AI chatbots are going to revolutionize customer service, why the days of frontline staff being told to “sell, not think” are over and what sustainability looks like for retailers in 2025.
If you missed the episode with Manhattan Associates’ Pieter Van den Broecke, you can catch up here.
Faire is the largest global b2b marketplace for independent retailers. In this episode, Faire’s UK General Manager Charlotte Broadbent joins Natalie to discuss:
How Faire is disrupting the wholesale sector and benefits for SMEs
Opportunities and challenges facing independent retailers today
How indies can up their game with AI
Values-based shopping and why ‘Not on Amazon’ is Faire’s most popular filter
Black Friday – should indies take part or is it a race to the bottom?
Women in tech – breaking down barriers and advice for the next generation of female leaders
Charlotte’s bio:
Charlotte joined the Faire team as UK General Manager in 2022, at an exciting and unique time when the US-founded b2b marketplace was pivoting to focus on international expansion. During her time at Faire she has led major category expansion, go-to-market strategy and partnership projects.
Prior to this, she served as the COO of an international fine jewellery brand and retailer, Tamara Comolli. Here, she worked closely with the founder to solve the daily challenges in business, running a retail business through a pandemic and the wholesale aspects to retail.
Charlotte started her career in private equity at Terra Firma Capital partners where she assessed and delivered new investments but also grew the value of those businesses through operational levers, focused on the retail and consumer sectors. It was during this time that Charlotte came to the realisation that she wanted to roll up her sleeves to be more involved in the operational side of leading a business, particularly through digital transformation. This passion led to her role at Faire today.
From the rise of Temu and Shein to immersive digital commerce – and not to mention the resurgence of good old-fashioned bricks & mortar retail – Amazon certainly isn’t short of competitive threats.
Miya Knights joins Natalie on Retail Disrupted to explore what comes next for the online retailing giant and whether it has what it takes to stay relevant in the future.
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They discuss:
📦 How Amazon became the most influential retailer of the 21st century.
3️⃣ 0️⃣ Whether Jeff Bezos’ belief that most large companies only last around 30+ years still rings true.
🤖 How AI and technology more generally is enabling retailers to level the playing field and future-proof their store estate.
🇨🇳 Temu – how it differentiates from Amazon, whether they can co-exist and our views on Amazon’s plans to launch a Temu-style storefront.
🤳 The future of digital commerce – we don’t browse on Amazon! How the rise of TikTok, Roblox and other immersive platforms will require action by Amazon to avoid being perceived as too transactional and one-dimensional.
The interview from this episode originally aired on The Globalist from Monocle Radio. Natalie discusses the latest global retail stories with Georgina Godwin:
Ikea’s Roblox venture: the launch of a virtual store and how Ikea has become the first brand to offer paid work on the gaming platform.
Walmart’s tech update: innovation in delivery – drones and at-home delivery – and the beta launch of a generative AI-powered shopping assistant.
Pretty Little Thing becomes the latest UK retailer to start charging for returns.
You can listen to the original episode of The Globalist Episode 3352.
Jeremy Schwartz was the turnaround CEO of Pandora, the world’s largest jewellery company with 2,500 stores and e-commerce sites in 90 countries. Prior to that, Jeremy was Chairman and CEO of The Body Shop from 2013 to 2017. He also previously spent time at Sainsbury’s and, as Brand Director, he was the architect of the grocer’s turnaround in 2005 which saw a decade of growth after years in decline. He is the former Managing Director of L’Oréal UK and, as Innovation Director for Coca-Cola Europe, he invented Coke Zero. Jeremy is currently the Chairman of Kantar’s Sustainability Transformation Practice.
Paul Wilkinson, Product Director at Deliveroo and former Tesco and Amazon exec, joins Natalie to discuss retail technology trends.
They explore the evolution of quick commerce, why Deliveroo won’t chase 15-minute delivery and moving into non-food to “bring the whole high street to the customer”.
Other topics covered include: learnings from the restaurant sector, supermarket collaboration, voice commerce and frictionless checkout.