How SPAR leveraged its retail chain network to become an instant grocery delivery leader

Founded in 1932, SPAR is one of the world’s leading food retail chains with over 13,600 stores in over 48 countries, serving 14.5 million consumers daily.

Just as Blink’s mission is to empower restaurants, supermarkets, and retailers, SPAR came into being with the mission of empowering its retailer and wholesale partners.

Challenge

Having conquered the multi-format retail strategy in the physical realm, SPAR faced challenges in the digital realm. Consumer preferences and behaviors have evolved, and trends have now shifted towards e-commerce and quick commerce. Now, consumers demand instant gratification and want their goods delivered at their doorstep instantly.

Having no expertise in setting up an online store and managing instant deliveries, SPAR was unable to compete with rising incumbents in the quick commerce space. Instant delivery services such as DoorDash, Swiggy, and Pandamart to name a few, have proliferated in recent years to take away the share of consumers from retail chains such as SPAR.

Without a direct online ordering platform to cater to online customers, SPAR began to lose its edge over newer, digital-first competitors.  

Solution

In September 2021, SPAR Pakistan joined forces with Blink to launch its first supermarket quick commerce platform. What Blink provided them was a SPAR branded website and mobile app, giving them the freedom to run and grow their business online without the hassle of managing orders manually. Now, SPAR had a comprehensive online grocery shop management system with an end-to-end direct online ordering and fleet management solution.

Customers could now have their groceries delivered from the SPAR website and app, faster than ever before. The seamless user experience that Blink provided, enabled SPAR to double down on their customer retention, while Blink’s in-house technical support team was available 24/7 to allow SPAR to go digital with ease.

What’s more, Blink even provided SPAR with full customer data ownership, allowing SPAR to target and engage with its customers in a more data-driven manner. SPAR was given full control of their orders through Blink’s Dynamic Dashboard where they can view real-time data of all their sales, branches, products, and customers all in one window through a live dashboard backed by business intelligence.

Blink created their product, keeping in mind the needs of supermarkets. Blink’s built-in inventory management system gives SPAR and other supermarkets the opportunity to not worry about receiving orders for sold-out SKUs. Blink offers the added functionality to integrate with the brand’s ERP system enabling real-time stock updates, relieving supermarkets of any added hassle. Moreover, Blink even provides retail chains with Advance Product Variation, whereby they can select from a wider choice of add-ons to items with 15+ variations at the product level, perfect for a large grocery store chain with thousands of brands and multilayered SKUs.

Results

Blink allowed SPAR to leverage its physical infrastructure to build an e-commerce shop to compete with digital-first instant delivery platforms. Within the first 6 months, SPAR was able to increase its online orders by 2x with Blink.

SPAR e-commerce manager commented “With the unified ordering, we can manage our mobile apps and website together from a single window”

Unlike aggregators and grocery delivery apps that are unable to maintain a high number of SKUs, SPAR was able to take advantage of Blink’s enterprise technology stack and list 10,000+ SKUs on its online store as well, enhancing its customer experience. In the first few months of launching their online store, SPAR was able to maintain an active customer base of 10,000+ customers, with 700+ daily active users on their mobile app.

The aim of increasing consumer engagement and loyalty was met by SPAR, as they achieved an overwhelming reorder rate of 46% (industry e-commerce reorder rates stand at 30%). Moreover, their signup conversion rate was a whopping 63%, a testament to the retail chain’s newfound ability to get online customers to take action. With an average engagement time on their mobile app of 15+ mins, SPAR has also been able to actively engage its customers to seamlessly explore all the items on the mobile app.

Ever since joining Blink, SPAR has been able to launch its own branded e-commerce and quick commerce platform. Their success is evident through the satisfaction of their customers; on the basis of 10,000+ order reviews, SPAR has achieved an overall order rating score of 4.36, which is a testament to its success in providing e-commerce grocery to its loyal customers.

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