5 Myths about Competitive Intelligence & Grocery E-Commerce

To increase profitability and boost efficiency – your business needs a clear point of view of its market advantages and your competition’s strategies. To get that full picture, you need reliable data.

Competitive intelligence, welcome to the group chat.

What is Competitive Intelligence?

Competitive intelligence is the process of collecting data and analyzing it to support your strategic planning.

To drive growth, businesses leverage this intelligence process to gain transparency into pricing, promotion, assortment, and availability data.

Companies strategizing with competitive intelligence are outperforming the competition. More than 90% of Fortune 500 companies have a competitive intelligence program in place.

Retailers use competitive intelligence solutions to guide merchandising decisions, price adjustments, and promotional events. Competitive intelligence is the connection between data and action, and enables you to:

• Monitor industry trends
• Consider competitions’ strategies
• Identify missed opportunities
• Make deliberate decisions

How Do Grocery Retailers Benefit from Competitive Data?

Data can be hard to collect and even harder to analyze. If you don’t have the right systems in place, you could miss out on profitable opportunities.

Grocery retailers using accurate data benefit from:

• Understand market trends. For example, you can learn which products / categories are popular and how price strategies are changing. With these insights, you can optimize your product assortment and adjust your pricing to stay ahead of competitors.
• Identify threats. For example, using competitive data you might discover new competition or a shift in consumer preferences. Use your data to take proactive measures to defend your market share and keep customer loyalty strong.
• Benchmark performance. With competitive data, retailers can set a baseline of performance. Knowing this information might help you refocus your strategy to drive growth.

There’s a handful of misconceptions about retail competitive intelligence and grocery e-commerce… let’s talk about them:

Myth #1: Competitive data is only worth it for big organizations.

Knowledge is a superpower… no matter your size! Retail data provides critical visibility into price, promotion, assortment, and availability. Whether your business is global or regional, you should consider how accurate data will help you address tactical and strategic questions in merchandising and product planning.

And it’s worth mentioning that large companies regret not implementing intelligence-based solutions sooner. 70% believe that their past campaigns would have been way more successful if they had used competitive intelligence.

Myth #2: Shoppers only care about deals – data won’t help us build loyalty.

Ok, so I’ll agree that online shoppers care about price and value. But, it’s not the only priority that  builds loyalty. What motivates you to shop at a particular retailer? Convenience.

Personally, I think online grocery shopping is convenient; I can easily select the items I’m looking for, there’s an option for curbside pickup,  and I can easily check out product reviews. I’m not alone either… about 60% of US shoppers prefer to shop online. By the way, the convenience of online shopping encourages shoppers to spend. Online basket prices are significantly larger than offline baskets – consumers spend about 2.6x online compared to offline.

Your data will help you build consumer loyalty; you’ll see a complete view of the marketplace to know which categories are growing and how price strategies are changing. 

Myth #3: Grocery ecommerce isn’t growing… I only need in-store data.

In-store shopping isn’t going to disappear, but the reality is that online grocery shopping is increasingly popular across all demographics. Buying online is a practical option for many shoppers. 

Retail sales will grow to $1.148 trillion this year, led by digital grocery shopping. Interestingly, according to eMarketer, most online grocery sales are happening on grocers’ websites.

As categories like food, beverage, health, and personal care make major gains in ecom sales, you’ll need that digital data to support your own decisions. 

Myth #4: Grocery data collection is too inaccurate and challenging.

Omnichannel data can get very complex. Gathering and analyzing in-store data, web data, and vendor portal data is no easy feat. But, the right data provider will efficiently gather data and use machine learning technology to match and create action-driving analytics. Retail analytics should help you respond to the market and connect you to your customer’s needs.

If you have a data-driven culture, you should look for a competitive intelligence provider that can reliably collect millions of data points from hundreds of sources – at a zip code level – any time you need it. Find out what questions you should ask vendors when selecting a retail data and intelligence provider here.

Myth #5: Competitive intelligence and retail data isn’t a must have.

If you’re serious about growth, then you should be serious about competitive intelligence.

Think about your goals…  increase category sales, merchandise the right SKUs, price competitively, and reduce out of stocks. Competitive data will help you increase conversions, expand sales, build loyalty,  and reduce inventory write-offs.

The Bungee Tech Difference

Some of the advantages to accurate competitive intelligence:

• Receive accurate matching to all competitive catalogs
• Eliminate manual mapping and cleansing
• Get data from hard-to-access sites and hard-to-match categories like private labels or fresh foods

Commit to your growth. Bungee Tech will give you a fast and cost-effective way to cover all competitors, daily, at a zip code level. No more relying on delayed or inaccurate data.