Elevating the In-Store Grocery Shopping Experience

Improve the in-store grocery shopping experience.

Related to Product Improvement
For Generalist PM

Walmart

Instacart

Stripe

Google

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Answers (4)

Jesus Rojas

Clarify the Scope
Just a clarification, while we are saying improve this is more of a product design – Yes.

Can we focus on US market as I am familiar with users and grocery shops – Sure
– Let me also narrow it down to larger grocery stores i.e. Lucky, Safeway and not in big box shops like Costco. or really small mom and pop store.
Negotiate a smaller scope
The focus will be on mobile app as it will be needed while shopping. I will not talk about Web or desktop app – OK
As it is made explicitly in the question, it is all about experience in the store and not delivery.
Choose the Goal for the product (Describe after scope down)
OK, we are designing a mobile app product for better in-store grocery shopping experience in US for large stores i.e Lucky, Safeway, Walmart not considering club stores i.e Costco, Sam’s club
List User Groups
I will listing the users in a slightly different way than usual.
1) Busy individuals – Want to get the shopping done as quickly as possible.
2) Family without kids – Who want to have an pleasant experience of shopping together
3) Family with kids – Similar to above but with kids, keeping in mind kids needs to be entertained, and may have different needs. But largely overlap with family.
4) Elderly – For most of them, this is one of the life’s activity for them. They don’t mind extra time exploring but need help with heavier objects.
Selected Group
For our discussion, let go with Elderly group, it is not the most favorite for many people, so it might bring a different perspective to the discussion.
List User Needs & Pain Points
Needs of Elderly grocery shopping
– Price sensitive, not have a boat load of money to throw, retired people are conservative with spending.
– In some case, may need motor carts to get around the shop
– Due to age, they need to be conscious of health issues. i.e Diabetics, blood pressure etc.
– Need help with heavier items.
– Have plenty of time and for them, grocery shopping is a pastime not a chore.
– Unable to read small print on the items.
– Be able to chime to store keeps when they need help.
– Help with budget shopping, coupon tagging etc. (Add up all your items & price it out as they shop to help them with budget shopping.)
– See if you can make it one stop shopping Grocery, Meds.
List Product Ideas
1) App is aware of all the store aisles and inventory
2) Price information is integrated.(help with budget shopping)
3) Recipe of food & in-app videos for the recipes
4) (a) Medical conditions of each individual is integrated or
4(b) provide generic data food interaction actions.
5) Shopping list/wish list.
6) Easy way to read fine prints.
7) Help request.
Prioritize a solution
In our case, it is factors are Impact , cost to implement,
These are listed in the order of priority.
1) H, M
5) H, L
7) H, L
2) H, L
4b) H, L
—- Below the MVP—
4a) H, M
3) M, H
6) H, L
Describe the Selected Solution
It is a mobile app, the shopper can use to add their shopping list along with wish list items. The app will scan through items prices across different stores and provide options to user 1) best place to shop at one store 2) Cheapest way to shop 3) May even offer to arrange for transportation in future enhancements. 4) Provide the best time to go so it is easy to find parking or cheaper transportation. (Older people are generally in their retirement & have lots of free time)

The app is aware of the store inventory, aisles so it can navigate your through the store for your shopping needs.
It can provide them with total pricing as they put things in their basket, so one does not need to worry if they have blown through their budget.

The MVP includes providing general guidance for food and medical interaction (high sugar items warning, etc)
Define a success matrix
# Number of elderly shoppers /week and /month (for short term tracking) using the app.
# YoY increase in elderly shoppers in the shoppers using the app (to account for season variations.
# Number of stores adoptions.
# User ratings.
Summarize your answer
This is a mobile app which helps elderly to manage their shopping starting with shopping list, directions to store. When in store, it help them navigate through store for their needs with guidance on food contents, pricing and budget.

Karan Trivedi

Clarifying Questions:

Is it for a specific grocery retailer/outlet? Or generic? – Let’s say a Generic app
Is it for the US market or Worldwide- US
Any specific groceries like Organic only ? etc – No, Anything in general
Can there be an app that goes along with the physical in- store experience – Choice is yours.
Any specific Goal in mind towards improving the shopping experience like increased engagement of users, increase in revenue, sales, improve the customer experiences in-store? – Lets go with improving Customer Experience in-store that can in turn drive higher sales.

Goal: Is to improve Customer Experience in-store

Users:

Elderly – who might need more help
Busy Working Individuals – who need to complete their weekly grocery shopping quickly/easily
A Family with kids
Family with Pets

I will go with the Busy Working Individual, as I feel they need to quickly get their grocery and leave to attend to other demands so we have to make their shopping experience more efficient, productive and thereby this will lead to the increase in NPS ratings and increased sales.

User Journey/Pain points

Sally is a working professional who lives in the city and does her groceries once a week
She typically has a List and updates it once in a while
She is also health conscious and chooses products wisely but she has very little time for grocery shopping and needs it to be easy and convenient.
Since time is of essence, she likes to find a perfect parking spot upon arrival in-store
She struggles at times to find the exact aisles in which the item is located and hence wastes precious time
She does not like long lines at checkout and w’d appreciate a very efficient way of getting items bagged and checked out

I will prioritise a few of these pain points per Sally’s desired experiences and her preferences

Since time is of essence, she likes to find a perfect parking spot upon arrival
She struggles at times to find the exact aisles in which the item is located and hence wastes precious time
She does not like long lines at checkout and w’d appreciate a very efficient way of getting items bagged and checked out
She typically has a List and updates it once in a while

Solution IDeas for the above Pain points – Will go with 1,2,3 based on the pain points above for MVP

Priority	Solution	Value/Effort
1	#1: Finding a Parking Spot easily: The grocery app should be able to use local maps and a list of nearby parking spots. If the grocery outlet itself has dedicated parking structure/open space, must be able to give real time parking spot availability and the time limit for which its available.	High/High
2	Search needs to be improved within store to help Sally find the right items – which aisle, which shelf , etc details for easy discoverability – an in-store voice assistant can be leveraged for this search	High/High
3	Scanners for price should be available at every aisle to help Sally check the price, add to cart or discard from cart. Smart carts will help Sally make payments once the cart is updated, use Credit/Debit/PayPal mechanisms to make payments . Receipts from the transaction will be saved in the app. All this makes checkout faster.	High/High
4	Sally should be able to create Shopping Lists using voice-activated agents to save time. The voice agent can suggest or recommend any item based on the past history of purchases or based on what Sally has picked up on the current list and perhaps she missed out an item ( e.g to make pancakes, she picked up flour, sugar, syrup but forgot to add eggs!)	Medium/Medium

Metrics:

Primary Metric: Total Sales – per user, on a weekly,daily, and monthly basis

Secondary metrics:

%of DAU,WAU, MAU who use the in-store search assistant to locate products

% of total checkouts using aisle scanners on a Weekly, Daily, Monthly basis

# of users who abandoned their Cart

Avg time spent per user within a store

Time taken to check out per user

Heather Kurtz

Clarification:

Where is this targeted at? Is it India or Worldwide? Targeted at India initially. Will later upgrade worldwide

Are we partnering with some particular Grocery? If yes What are their strengths and weaknesses? NO, We are not partnering with any particular Grocery Store. You can assume a normal Grocery store for this answer

Do we have any limitations/constraints in terms of Tech, Monetary Limit or something? NO, there are no constraints.

Thanks for the above clarification.

So from our discussion I can deduce that, We are planning to improve the User Experience within the store and are not limited by anything. The solution will be initially deployed at India and depending on the success, this will be upgraded to World-wide.

Next, I would like to discuss about the different user segments and their pain points. Will prioritize at each step and then will come up with a list of solutions. Finally will Prioritize and select one from the solution list and then discuss some success metrics for the same.

User Groups:

Young Professionals-These are the new working professionals. They tend to be youthfull, explorers in food and also a bit of Health Conscious. They try to spend as minimal time as possible at stores like this.
Family People- They are highly conscious of health and healthy foods. They rarely try to explore new random dishes. They tend to spend more time compared to youths as they take time to think about the healthiness and quality of the product.
Kids- They are normal kids between the age 10 and 18. Often come to grocery stores to get products listed by their parents or some elder and sometimes along with their elders as well.

Of this, I would like to choose Young Professionals as my target group as they tend to adapt to new technological changes pretty soon and are also more into experimenting with their Youthness.

Pain Points/Usecases:

They want to cover their shopping at grocery stores as fast as possible. This includes both finding the products as well as payment.
Often, they don’t know what the product is for or its name in the first place?
Often it is difficult for them to find a parking space.
They want to try new food/dishes once in a while.

Of the above painpoints, I would like to choose the first and fourth point compared to others. This is because, these are more unique to them and solving them will create a totally new experience at the store. Moreover, any user would love when his/her time spent gets optimized. Thus the first problem is one of the major issue that influences a lot when it gets solved efficiently.

I will also link the second one as it is more connected with the final pain point.

Solutions:

A device can be installed that has a random sets of cuisines every day listed along with the needed materials. The dishes will be categorised as the ones that can be done easily in any homes and the other category that has dishes that requires experience and special equipments. The device also has a QR code reader. On reading a product’s QR it gives information on what the product is and dishes that can be made from it.
The products can be attached with a RFID technology that can be read by the Grocery store’s app installed in the user’s phone. On bringing the product near to the phone’s cam with the app opened, The product gets added to the bill and the user can pay for the Bill through payment method that he likes through the phone itself.
The User can install an app that on searching for a product gives information on where to find the product including the Row and Column details.

SolutionReach
(to the customers)Impact
(to the Grocery Store)Effort
(to the Grocery Store) Confidence
(How confident I am wrt the idea)

Solution-1	High	High	Medium	Medium
Solution-2	High	High	Medium	High
Solution-3	Medium	Medium	Low	Medium

Reasons:

In the case of solution-1, the reach will be higher as people who love to explore their food options are going to know new dishes along with the required products with just a tap away. The impact to the grocery store is high as people who came with the idea of buying one product may buy three more on being encouraged to rey something new through the device. While the effort is medium as these are pretty much available in the internet and the device just selects random set and showcases there in the display.

In the case of Solution-2, the reach will be high as this helps user get his billing and payment done right at the place where he found his/her product. The impact to the Grocery Store is high as this certainly reduces the queue in the billing section to a large extent. The Effort is significant as each product should be RFIDed properly at every stock refilling. One major con in this case is that, People need not scan all the products that they are taking and thus might affect a loss for the firm. Something Similar to Contactless Card payment.

In the case of Solution-3, the Reach is Medium compared to the others as this job is always done by the workforce present at the firm anyways. While the effort to the store is comparatively low as the placement in a grocery stores don’t change often and thus once updated at the start will be good enough for lot of days.

Thus, from the above analysis, I would like to prioritize Solution 1 as the con in solution 2 might cause huge loss to the owner.

Success Metrics:

# of clicks on the device per session-A session ends when the device is inactive for two mins continuously
# of scans made per day.
Most clicked on cuisines per month.

Summary:

The aim was to improve the in-house grocery store experience. On choosing the Young Workforce as the target customers, their pain point was analysed and the chosen painpoint was that they want to do their shopping as soon as possible and also found their nature of exploring different dishes. With this in mind Solutions were discussed and came up with a final solution of setting up devices that could list out many dishes randomly which on clicking by the user lists the products needed and thus improve their experience inside.

Donovan Okang

Clarification

We’ll assume that we’re doing this question as if we are Google. We’ll focus our efforts on large grocers like a Kroger or Whole Foods and ignore more niche grocery shopping experiences like a gourmet goods store or a bodega.

Furthermore, we will not qualify ordering online and picking up in-store as part of the in-store grocery shopping experience.

Goal

Before we dive into solving this problem, let’s first take a step back and think about why are we doing this? What is our motivation here and what are we trying to achieve?

A good way of getting at that is thinking about Google’s mission statement which is to organize the world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible. I think this relates to wanting to improve the in-store grocery shopping experience in the sense that there are a million different products in grocery stores with various different prices and nutritional content. There is a lot of data and information there, which can be hard to navigate.

If there isn’t a specific focus area the interviewer wants us to improve, let’s focus on making the shopping experience simpler and less complicated.

Users

Literally all adults, aside from college students in dorms and service members in barracks, go grocery shopping to some degree. For an experience as ubiquitous as grocery shopping, it’s hard to come up with a magic bullet that solves everything for everyone. One of the ways in which I like to narrow scope is to look at the different the different user segments and choose one to focus on:

Young Professionals
Heads of Households
Senior Citizens
Local Business Employees

Out of the above user segments, I’m going to suggest we focus on the Heads of Households. This user segment likely does the most shopping at grocery stores in terms of both frequency and market basket size. Based upon this I think they will give us the biggest opportunity for making the shopper experience simpler and less complicated.

Pain Points

It’s hard to manage kids while shopping
How do you find the best deals? If you’re buying groceries for a whole family it is going to get expensive
They have a million other errands to run, they just want to get this done quickly
If they buy or try something new how do they know if their family is going to like it

Solutions

Fastest Route Map – Users could upload their grocery list to Google then inside of Google maps we could display the most optimal route inside of the store to acquire all of the items on the list. Addresses pain point #3 and tangentially #1.
Expected Time in Store – Google already offers estimate on busy times for different stores and locations, what if we took this a step further and based off of the business estimate of the store plus the items on the users grocery list we could give them an accurate estimate of how long it would take them to grocery shop. Addresses pain point #3.
Deal Alerts – Users would receive alerts, something like push notifications, texts, or emails, whenever one or several of their routinely purchased items goes on sale at a grocery store near them. We could even mail them digital coupons for items. Addresses pain point #2.

Prioritization

In all likelihood we won’t have the bandwidth or the resources to build out all three solutions in parallel so let’s pick one to focus on. To help guide that conversation I’m going to use a comparison matrix:

Ease of Implementation, Value to User, Relevance to Goal

1. C+, A, A+ -> This would require have a map of the store’s lay out which is going to be hard to do at scale. I can definitely see users using this if they are in a hurry. This would directly help grocery shopping experience less complicated by guiding users towards where they need to go, we just need to make sure our UI isn’t cluttered or confusing.

2. B, C, C+ -> We might run into the same in store mapping problem as solution #1, but if we did an MVP based off of the number of items in a persons list it might be easier to build. I feel like this would be marginally useful to users, I’m sure people already have a good sense of how long it takes them to do their grocery shopping and the benefit of knowing how long it takes is only really valuable when the shopper is under an extreme time crunch.

3. B+, A-, C -> The alerting mechanisms wouldn’t be hard to implement but we would need to figure out how to set up a data feed of grocery store sales which could be challenging. If this is actually able to save the user a non insignificant amount of money it will definitely be valuable to them. This doesn’t really do a good job of helping making the in store shopping experience less complicated, I guess it kind of adds clarity in terms of the best price available for certain items but that is very minor progress towards our goal.

Summary

In order to make grocery shopping a less complicated experience for the Heads of Households, we are going to prioritize building a Fastest Route Map feature inside of Google Maps which will show users the optimal route to take for acquiring all of the groceries on their list.

———–

Self Critique:

I feel as if all of my solutions were fairly practical and not as imaginative as they could’ve been.
I touched upon our goal of the improvement and how it relates to Google’s mission statement at the start but never it brought it back full circle at the end. I should’ve included verbiage about how we would be collecting a lot of new data and information on people’s grocery shopping habits whenever they sync their grocery list to us to enable the Fastest Route Map.
I didn’t mention metrics or KPIs.