Supermarket Franchises are moving one step ahead in offering services to its customers. Now with the growth of local MSME business websites and big brand websites with localization features. Shopping is made easy now with no need to visit the store. A customer now can just book their items through the website and the supermarket will deliver it to you. This saves people’s time and helps them to do alternative important stuff.
While it is very easy for the customers, is it the same for all the other parties too? Absolutely not. The supermarket home delivery services surely have developed a new way to reach out to more customers each day. But certain challenges are there to understand and overcome. It’s essential for a supermarket franchise to recognize, understand, and manage such challenges to become #1 in the field. Here are 7 challenges for supermarket franchise that the 7 Heven management team deals with each day. Read the complete article to know everything in detail.
Top 7 Challenges to Overcome for Supermarket Home Delivery Services:
1. Coverage Area Planning:
Supermarket Home delivery services can be your one shot target facility for attracting a huge traffic to your store. But for making it so grand, you need to be more specific in what you want. Understand the limitations of a supermarket store. You can’t deliver your goods to a different city as the food will get rotten and who likes the rotten food, right?
Understand the opportunity within your area and use that. The technical term we use for this in industry is ‘Optimum Radius’. It also varies among tier-1, tier-2, and tier-3 cities. Several factors will impact your marketing as follows.
- Population Density:
Population factor should be your prime condition before you launch your service. This is dependent on the city as tier-1 cities will have more population density than tier-2 & tier-3. More the population density, more will be your potential customers within a short range. Thus instead of targeting a long distance, a short distance home delivery service will easily give you a boost.
- Competition:
Check your competitors with a positive business zeal. Understand their USPs and weaknesses and offer better services than them. However, understand that your motive is not to bankrupt your competition but to serve the people around you. Also tier-1 cities today have one supermarket store every few kilometres. This increases competition and makes your journey tough. Your optimum radius then should be lesser but optimised.
- Customer Demographic:
Identifying your target customer & their buying nature will help you tailor your services accordingly. You can offer discounts or organise a sales event in your store to boost sales.
For example- You can offer a 30 minute home delivery service to families with children looking for fresh groceries. But when it comes to other daily home goods, you can take a few hours to serve your priorities first.
2. Infrastructure Limitations:
It’s 2023 and you can’t rely on the old style supermarket store designs. As the population is growing and big cities don’t have much space now, we must optimise our store to feature more goods and store rooms to keep things fresh and available to all.
Your store space affects greatly on the store’s selling & home delivery capacity. If you’ve a smaller space, store your goods in less amounts to keep the store visually attractive. For this you must use the new technologies and take help from interior designing specialists.
Parking system, storage capacity, AND checkout system- YOU need a sharp eye on these factors to become the best supermarket franchise in India. The inventory management and a smooth checkout system will help improve the speed of the collecting the goods and delivery. Effective use of infrastructure will draw more people to you, further boosting your sales.
3. Operational Costs:
Being a businessman means having a firm grip on the financial transaction and management. You not only have to keep an eye on the transactions but also must keep the inflow higher than the outflow money. Along with the capital investment and raw material costing, the one segment that you can make your profit through is the operational costs. It covers up all the costing essential to continue operating the store. Here are a few pointers to keep in time for keeping your operational costs minimal.
Optimise your staffing levels will save a lot of money. Understand how much staff you need for operating your business at fastest. Extra staff will only create havoc at the store and make your pocket light as well.
- Implementing energy efficient technologies will help you save money as well.
- Product wastage is a big problem for supermarket franchises as food items get rotten very soon. Talk with your franchisor and develop a system of minimal wastages of goods.
- Make yourself ready with negotiable techniques as well. It will help you to land on better deals with your contractors.
4. Product Freshness & Quality:
Your priority challenge for supermarket franchise should revolve around serving your customer with the best products around. Understand that no marketing can ever touch the feel of genuine caring for customers. Hospitality is a genuine need for all and you, as a supermarket franchise owner must adapt it as your core nature. Focus on delivering only the fresh goods to your customers. This will undoubtedly become a USP of your store very quickly. Well, here are some points to keep your goods always fresh.
- Establish a robust supply chain management system. This will ensure the management of goods. As a result you will get the freshest foods on your table.
- Create a well-managed inventory management system for better care of products. Make sure no goods in your inventory leave out untouched.
- Conduct quality check programs on a regular period.
- Establish a temperature control environment for keeping your product fresh for a longer time.
- Engage in partnership with local suppliers as well to keep all demands fulfilled and goods fresh.
5. Technological Integration:
Let’s talk about technology now. After all, we’re living in the technological era and to survive in the market, you must adapt to the latest technological advancement for better supermarket home delivery services to your customers. Understand that technology isn’t limited only to your marketing but also can be used in your presentation. Make your store rich with technology such as modern lights, refrigerator, design, and other amenities (if needed). Here are a few suggestions that you can go for.
- Create an exclusive e-commerce website for your business. Start marketing through your website with the help of a Digital Marketing Agency for quick results.
- Go for creating your mobile app and ask people to download through ads and websites.
- Install an automated checkout system.
- Use advanced software for maintaining your business analytics and to secure your system completely.
- Use a modern day employee training program to make them familiar with the technology you use.
- Use personalised marketing techniques to reach out to more people and convert them.
6. Customer Expectations & Satisfaction:
Customers are everything in a business. You’re in a supermarket franchise business and you tend to have more interactions with customers in comparison to other businesses. Chances of customers leaving you for a better opportunity is also greater here. In such a situation, understand the opportunity lying within the hospitality of customers.
A customer doesn’t only look for better pricing. They look for a complete package where they get respect as well as good products. Here are some more insights about making good relationships with your customers.
- Keep a wide range of product lines to meet all the requirements of a customer.
- Make your system personalised to all your customers. This will let them enjoy your store’s experience warmly.
- Offer competitive pricing in the market. It doesn’t mean you offer the lowest of pricing but the right pricing. As per the marketing psychology, capable people reject both higher & lower prices. So keep the prices worth the products.
- Start loyalty programs and give attractive offers on each product.
- Arrange for seasonal sales to boost your traffic.
- Set up different surveys to gather customer’s feedback.
7. Market Competition:
Understand that your market competitions are not your enemy but a hidden friend of yours. Choose a supermarket that has greatly influenced the people. Learn from them and understand how their marketing and hospitality goes on. Now be better at everything they do. Here are a few suggestions for you to follow to overcome marketing challenges for supermarket franchise.
- Make something significant to differentiate your brand from others. Your system, hospitality, work ethics, ambience, product quality, and marketing should create a separate brand image.
- Offer a unique product line that is useful and in-demand in your area.
- Let your customers experience exceptional customer service with trained sales people & attendees.
- Use specific targeted marketing campaigns for boosting your franchise branding.
- Monitor modern market trends and analyse competitor’s strategies for better implementation.
If you want to know the pros and Cons of Owning a Supermarket Franchise in India, then read this blog.
Conclusion:
It’s not easy to become the best supermarket franchise in India. The path is full of competitions and it’s going to take a lot more time. Truly we don’t believe in the term ‘best’ as we believe in co-operative actions to serve a greater cause. At 7 Heven, we follow all the above suggested market challenges and their solutions to become a well-managed customer friendly supermarket franchise delivery services.
If you’re looking for a supermarket franchise to invest in, choose 7 Heven without a second thought. Call us now and our team will discuss all things in detail.