Customers shopping for groceries online prefer quality, value, service, and convenient delivery slots over speed of delivery. Srikant Sree Ram, Director, Amazon Fresh shares insights on grocery shopping trends in India
Can you highlight the journey of Amazon Grocery in India?
Grocery is one of our fastest-growing categories and has millions of products, delivered to 99.8% of pin codes in India. In the last 24 months, more than 50% of Amazon Fresh customers have come from Tier II, III, and smaller towns. 2022 has been very exciting for us as we expanded Amazon Fresh to offer fresh fruits & vegetables in over 35 Tier II and III cities such as Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Ongole, Trivandrum, Kochi, Hubli, Durgapur, and many more. We continue to listen deeply to our customer’s needs and introduced super saver offers, buy more save more, etc. to offer consumers the right value for their everyday essentials. We want to penetrate deep into Bharat and offer our full basket selection to consumers.
As per the recently released Local Circles Survey, we read that Amazon Fresh ranks on top in quality and service, how do you ensure customers are satisfied on both?
We are unusually passionate about customers and laser-focused on providing the best online shopping experience to our customers with a wide selection of products at a great value, convenience, and the best quality products at convenient delivery slots. We believe that quality is dependent on technology and it plays a critical role at every stage of the supply chain process – be it at the sourcing from farmers, at the collection center during quality checks, or while delivering the products to the customers. The recent survey released by Local Circles, clearly indicates that over 50% of consumers pre-plan their online grocery purchase and prefer a delivery slot as per their convenience. Similarly, service, quality, and value are important parameters to customers in comparison to the speed of delivery. These results indicate that we are on the right path and are listening to our customers, to offer them the convenience to shop at their preferred time slot, by offering them the right value, service, selection, and high-quality fruits and vegetables.
Additionally, we have also acted on customer insights and revamped our interface with new options such as ‘buy again’, highlighting new products, and various other features. We will continue to invest in technology advancements, and strengthen our supply chain to seamlessly deliver fresh quality fruits and vegetables timely to our customers.
As we head into 2023, what are Amazon’s plans for its Grocery business this year?
Our focus has always been customer backward, and we know that grocery shopping is a crucial part of our customers’ everyday lives. From fresh fruits and vegetables to dry grocery items customers build their baskets either monthly, weekly/top-up, daily, emergency, indulgence, or during occasions. Our aim has been to consistently provide them with a large selection of fresh fruits, vegetables, frozen and chilled products, beauty, baby, personal care, and pet products among other daily grocery needs. Our wet grocery selection is already present in over 35+ cities and for the remaining cities, customers all over India can shop for dry groceries across staples, cooking essentials, snacks, beverages, packaged food, household supplies, personal care, skin care, pet food, baby products such as diapers and baby food, and lots more, with delivery within 1-3 days. We plan to continue expanding Fresh in a phased manner across India, which allows us to offer fresh fruits and vegetables, and frozen and chilled products like dairy and meats coupled with other grocery items. We believe that customers will engage with us till the time they find a better customer experience elsewhere and hence our investments are focused on building better and newer shopping experiences for our customers.
