Online shopping still fails to capture Kiwis' enthusiasm
Wednesday, 6 May 2020
Jane Greenslade has been waiting 13 days for a mop and bucket ordered online.
Others have had orders cancelled, misdirected or delayed.
Online shopping is the only option for retail at the moment but customers have been left underwhelmed and businesses have been caught short.
The digital revolution is decades old, so why have New Zealanders been slow to do their shopping online?
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Greenslade hadn't shopped online before the coronavirus spread.
“I like to see what I purchase and check it out,” she said.
Her experience with online shopping since the arrival of Covid-19 has been decidedly mixed.
She is still waiting on the bucket and mop she ordered from Briscoes on April 21.
“Delivery from the two supermarkets has been excellent service, however, the delivery has let Briscoes down,” Greenslade said.
“It's a mop and bucket, so I would have thought an easy purchase.”
Customers from Briscoes and other stores have been warned delivery could take up to 10 business days.
Greenslade said other family members had received incomplete orders from other big-box retailers or have had orders cancelled at the checkout due to low stock.
Online shopping didn't really save time either, Greenslade said.
“I find it doesn’t save that much time other than travel time. I don’t get any exercise or social interaction this way. I also can’t choose my own fruit and vegetables and meat.”
Before the spread of the coronavirus, just 9 per cent of all retail sales were done online.
Total online sales as Covid-19 spread were up only 6 per cent on March last year, but spending online on groceries and liquor spiked 42 per cent.
On the other hand, spending at overseas sites was down 18 per cent on a year ago, in part due to changes around GST.
Farro chief executive Bryce Howard said the gourmet grocery store spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an online shopping platform three years ago, only to have to shelve the project after 12 months.
“It got to a point where we were doing 12 to 14 orders a week,” he said.
Online shopping didn't fit with why customers go to Farro.
“Everyone loves to go to Farro, it's their happy place, but they have to go to other supermarkets because that's the place where you go to buy toilet paper and detergent,” he said.
“For us to try to deliver the Farro experience online was a struggle.”
Just before the spread of Covid-19, Farro began to focus on selling items online “that made sense”, like the ready-to-eat meals that could be ordered and delivered on the same day, Howard said.
With the level 4 lockdown, demand for those items has spiked.
The company has also partnered with Snap Delivery to offer personal shopping and same day delivery.
Howard said selling online was a learning curve and the company was getting better at it.
A survey from Global Web Index found just a third of New Zealanders said they would shop online more after the outbreak was over, while 27 per cent said they would spend more time browsing or researching online before visiting stores.
Retail expert Juanita Neville-Te Rito said New Zealanders were generally a mobile population who used shopping as a social activity.
Without consumer pressure, companies had been slow to build an online presence, she said.
“This has just come with such speed that businesses have been left scrambling. Even at the corporate retailers, some of them are scrambling as well.”
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, it became clear that retail had been sorely underinvested, she said.
Retailers poured into bricks and mortar but failed to really invest into the digital experience, Neville-Te Rito said.
“We keep our costs so thin here in New Zealand retail that we don't invest. So when we do stuff like online stores, it is often a shitty experience.”
This meant that many shoppers haven't got used to shopping online, she said.
One or two negative experiences will put people off, Neville-Te Rito said.
Mighty Ape chief marketing officer Gracie Mackinlay said communication was key for online retail.
As an online retailer, Mighty Ape, had the systems in place to cope with the spike in demand that came during the Covid-19 crisis.
“It is a challenging time and a lot of things change in different directions, we have to make the call really quickly and move things around,” Mackinlay.
“Instead of waiting to see what happens, we are really up-front about the current situation, what the challenges are and what we are doing with the challenge.'
Customers responded well to the flow of communication, she said.
“If you tell people, then they are a lot more open to being accepting.”
Across social media, other large retailers are being roasted for incorrect, slow or missing orders.
“Love Kmart, but online ordering is hard work,' wrote one commentator on the company's Facebook page.
“It was pretty bad before lock down, but worse now. I don't think the stock level system was ever really good and with the increase of people ordering, it's really being highlighted. Please sort it out, we don't mind if out of stock, but don't make us get to checkout, or a few days later to find this out!'
Kmart has been approached for comment.
On Monday, Briscoe Group managing director Rod Duke said moving to being an online-only business had sharpened the company's focus on developing a stronger digital presence.
“We are learning to do business in a different way,” Duke said.
“I think what lockdown and the opening of a full online store has shown is there are aspects of doing business online that are quite different.”