What's Google's USP here? This service sounds like everything Google that Google goes at great lengths to avoid (physical products, customer service, etc).
There's no holding of inventory...thus no storage-related overhead...
When I was in college one of the jobs I had was at a combination "feed" mill/agri-center...the boss was 85 years old and made a speech each year when he distributed Christmas bonuses....
He bought the business as a young man back in the late 30s...
He never failed to mention that people relied on what we produced in their everyday lives...he was proud of the fact that he had never laid an employee off...
He told us, "People will always want good food when they sit down at the table, and we're part of making that possible..."
A truth in the last century...a truth now...
Investing in providing one of the basics of life...hard to question the logic...
I mean, this is the opposite of self-checkout efficiency. They're putting more people into to the cost of the product/service.
I wouldn't assume that Google is paying the same price that ordinary customers are in the retail settings Google order fillers pick from..
Likely rates were negotiated before launch...
They are selling the convenience of having groceries delivered to your home...
The two are entirely different, the margins, as well...
And at a $10/mo subscription, that's not profitable. Hiring someone at $15/hr to pick groceries and deliver them. I don't see the math working out very well.
The price of the groceries is the same as in the shop. You get the specials and all. The ordering app they have even lists the specials right at the top, it's easier to order specials online than it is in-store. Dutch are very price sensitive, there is very little margin for marking up convenience.
I don't know how they can make money on this. I suspect they bet on being able to automate order picking within say 5 years and are providing the service now as a loss leader to get people used to the idea, and work out their processes using people before spending big on automation.
if you buy some products delivery is free; this week it
was 8 bottles of coke or so
At the top it says 'free delivery when buying 2 4-packs of coca cola, for deliveries on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Also valid at pickup points.'
The 'pickup points' are where you can go to collect groceries yourself; you order online, it's bagged for you, you drive into a location where they put the bags into your car, you pay and you drive off. Takes less than 5 mins, many people schedule it on their way home when there is nobody at home to accept deliveries.
I love the home delivery thing - it feels very decadent though.
Anyway, to tie this back into the grocery deliveries - I think this is a major issue for marketing people in these supermarkets working on these new offerings. Their target market must be (at least initially) working professionals with two incomes, probably with (young) children, and many (most?) of those must have similar apprehensions to what I experience(d). I tried to pry some info on that away from a marketer once when I was interviewed as part of a focus group study on something similar, but either she didn't want to let up or she genuinely didn't know what I was talking about...
If anyone knows of literature on this topic, I'd be very interested. It's not something I ever hear about, it's somewhat taboo (or at least considered bad taste) to talk about this in real life (in my experience). Which I understand, it is after all almost a 'poor me, I have so much money I have buy another wallet' style problem.
Including groceries makes the existing, more general Google Express shopping service more valuable, and negates an advantage that Amazon's competing service, which already has grocery delivery, has over Google's service.
Analyzing the grocery delivery bit as if it were a standalone business is an error.
I wonder if grocery delivery is the MVP for an automated delivery market
Thus gaining the ability to track a lot more about what people buy/eat, in addition to their their current tracking what people read (google-analytics), where they go (android), etc.
> the cost of convenience...
...plus the long-term cost of giving Google more details about your life.
Rather, they are expanding the delivery service they launched 3 years ago to include groceries.
They aren't just entering the delivery market.
Google Express (for which this is simply a new feature) does all those things, and its something Google has been expanding; its simply false that Google goes great lengths to avoid them.
And its an essential feature to compete with Amazon's offering that competes with Google Express.
The main Google/Amazon differentiator -- the unique selling point Google has compared to others in the similar space -- is that Google aggregates existing retailers who have unique inventory, customer relations, etc., and preserves those for customers, while Amazon acts as a single separate retailer (essentially, Google's USP is that it preserves the member retailers USPs that aren't tied directly to the physical retail location.)
More likely you get a text message with an access code and pick your boxes out of the trunk.