Remember the days when you went grocery shopping with your parents? First, you would pay a visit to the bakery, then the greengrocer, oh, and don’t forget the butcher. After a while, grocery stores started to expand and products were made of better quality. Why going to all those different stores for your weekly groceries, if you could get everything all in once at just one store? Why visit four, or five stores, when you could get (almost) the same quality at the supermarket?
Just a few years ago, I started to use the self-serving check outs at the local grocery store. They said it would improve the customer experience. It really did though, as I didn’t have to wait in long lines anymore and no slow cashier was annoying me. Especially since I often do small or daily groceries, I don’t feel like waiting too long in line behind people who are doing their weekly groceries.
At the same time, start-ups were basically popping out of the ground. Companies that started to disrupt the supermarket industry, by changing the customers’ shopping experience. Companies such as HelloFresh, Picnic and even Albert Heijn started their own home delivery. It’s not about me paying a visit to the store anymore. Today, it’s about them visiting my place. What makes it even better, is that they deliver my specific order. The delivery people will even put everything in my kitchen! Depending on where I get my groceries, I don’t even have to think about what I am going to eat. Eventually, I won’t have to think about my food anymore.
Thinking about all these technological innovations, makes me wonder about the future. How far will we go for more convenience and speed? How long will it take before there won’t be any checkouts anymore and that my electronic wallet will be the only way to pay for my products? Will there be a time that we are going to walk out of the store with our groceries, without even worrying about the payment? That there will be a 360 degrees’ scanner the second I walk out of the store, that I only need to scan my fingerprint and the system will identify my personal (literally!) data? Or I don’t even have to go to the store anymore? Will I use virtual reality to get the ‘grocery shopping’ experience without leaving the house? Or will the information system of the supermarket automatically know that I’m running out of food and will deliver everything I need, without an order placement? Will they decide what food I’ll eat, just for my convenience? How is my data going to be secured? How are we going to make sure that our personal information won’t be lying on the streets? Or better said, somewhere in the air? How am I going to be sure that they won’t know EVERY, SINGLE THING I eat?! And everything I poop…
References:
Heneghan, C. (2016). 7 grocery retail technologies to innovate the shopping experience. [online] Food Dive. Available at: http://www.fooddive.com/news/7-grocery-retail-technologies-to-innovate-the-shopping-experience/399553/ [Accessed 3 Oct. 2016].
Winch, J. (2013). How technology will transform your visit to the supermarket. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/money-saving-tips/10172480/How-technology-will-transform-your-visit-to-the-supermarket.html [Accessed 3 Oct. 2016].
These are some interesting questions we should be asking ourselves! In the future I hope that the companies that supply us with our groceries become ‘smarter’, offering exactly what we want and when we want before we even do! I, however, also hope technological innovations will also make us as consumers smarter.
The technological innovations should not stop on the supply side but should improve our demands as wel. Consumers should care more about where and who the food comes from, what’s in it, what’s sprayed on it and how sustainable it was produced. The virtual reality aspect that you highlighted could be used for convenience and saving time, but also offers shops the chance to lets consumers be more conscious about what they’re eating (or eventually pooping). This can be done by interactive shelves, digital green screens and more!
http://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/supermarket-technology-interactive-virtual-future-article
I like your romanticized view about the way life will progress, at least in the grocery shopping and day to day products industry. Peter Thiel who co-founded Paypal, an avid investor and leading author argues differently in his NYT Bestseller book Zero to One. He first defines technology as any new and better way of doing things. There is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. He claims that besides significant progress in computing there hasn’t been any significant progress in other industries in the last 2 decades. He gives examples of energy innovation or transportation speeds to illustrate his point. How do you feel about his claim?
Hi Chucky! Thanks for your post, the last paragraph really makes me think about our grocery shopping experience in the future. Ideally, it would save a lot of time if the grocery store would automatically deliver items without an order placement. Already stores are able to analyze big data from ‘store loyalty programs and credit card purchases’ in order to predict shopper’s demands ahead of time. As a matter of fact, this loyalty card allows the supermarket to identify exactly what you buy, how much you spend, how often you come (your level of loyalty) –creating a demographic profile of each individual. So, essentially, they already know exactly what you eat and poop if you only shop there! Having this loyalty card then creates an important tradeoff to consider between privacy and targeted advertising – would you rather have a firm not know your grocery habits or would you rather get discounts for your most commonly purchased products?
– http://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/consumer-buying-behavior-how-grocery-stores-can-tap-big-data-meet-shopper-demand
– https://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/jun/08/supermarkets-get-your-data