This report provides an overview of how leading grocery retail companies responded to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis between April and July 2020. The companies included in this report are Auchan, Casino Guichard-Perrachon, Carrefour, Cencosud, FEMSA, Kroger, Tesco, Walmart and Woolworths. Key strategies employed in this quarter included adapting to increasingly cautious shoppers and refining omnichannel initiatives.
This report comes in PPT.
Grocers around the world raced in the first half of 2020 to bring to market and promote online grocery offerings. With consumer interest in online grocery shopping remaining elevated, retailers should focus on refining these services and making them more sophisticated in ways that resonate with a grocer’s core customer.
Carrefour’s investment in a new grocery marketplace provides an example of how even retailers with fairly developed e-commerce offerings can continue to invest in these offerings as demand remains strong.
As the pandemic drags on, it is easy for both corporations and consumers to become complacent to the challenges frontline store associates will continue to face until the COVID-19 pandemic is a thing of the past.
Retailers need to continue to ensure that store associates have the personal protective equipment necessary for their public-facing jobs. In some cases, such as in the US, retailers may need to take extra steps to ensure that shoppers adhere to local safety regulations while in-store. These steps are essential for keeping store associates engaged and maintaining a positive public perception of the retailer as a whole.
While consumer preferences and demand are likely to evolve more slowly in the months ahead than they did in the past six months, new needs and purchase occasions will continue to appear as the pandemic continues.
Retailers and manufacturers will need to pay close attention to emerging consumer trends. As seasons change and markets enter new phases of pandemic response, new products and services are likely to resonate with shoppers. For example, in many markets, September marks the back-to-school shopping season. Retailers should consider that different products will be demanded by families for 2020 compared to 2019.
Retail is the sale of new and used goods to consumers from a business for personal or household consumption from retail outlets, kiosks, market stalls, vending, direct selling and e-commerce. Retail is the aggregation of Retail Offline and Retail E-Commerce. Excludes specialist retailers of motor vehicles, motorcycles, vehicle parts. Also excludes fuel sales, foodservice sales, rental transactions, and wholesale sales (e.g. Cash and Carry). Sales value excluding or including VAT/Sales Tax. Retail also excludes the informal retail sector. Informal retailing is retail trade which is not declared to the tax authorities. Informal retailing encompasses (a) sales generated by unregistered and unlicensed retailers, i.e. retailers operating illegally, and (b) any proportion of sales generated by a registered and licensed retailer that is not declared to the tax authorities. Unregistered and unlicensed retailers operate predominantly (although not exclusively) as street hawkers or operate open market stalls, as these channels are harder for the authorities to monitor than permanent outlets. Activities in the illegal market, which is usually understood to refer to trade in illegal, counterfeit or stolen merchandise, are included within our definition of informal retailing. Activities in the “grey market”, which is usually understood to refer to trade in legal merchandise that is sold through unauthorized channels – for example cigarettes bought legally in another country, legally imported, but sold at lower prices than in authorized channels – will be included as informal retailing if no tax is paid on sale by the retailer. However if the retailer pays tax – for example on cigarettes bought legally in another country but sold at a lower price than standard – the sale is included within formal retail.
See All of Our DefinitionsIf you purchase a report that is updated in the next 60 days, we will send you the new edition and data extraction Free!