The Google Express Shopping retail delivery concept is “going well” and expected to be rolledout across the US and selected international markets in partnership with retailers, its managing
director of performance solutions and innovations told the MetaPack Delivery Conference in Londonlast week.Ian Carrington told delegates: “From Google’s perspective, we are seeing everything changing andthe pace of change is going to increase. Another thing is take risks – it may not work, but you’vegot to innovate or you’re not going to be around – and if you fail, move onto the nextopportunity.”
He described Google Express Shopping as “an experiment that we are doing across America”, in SanFrancisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Chicago, and Washington DC, “and essentially what we aredoing is offering same-day delivery via a one-stop shop, working with more than 40 retail partnersin America – people like Walgreens or Target, and you can log on and choose which of the dailyessentials you want delivered to you”.
A person in that shop will then go and “pick it, like a normal customer, and will go and checkout like a normal customer, and then one of our delivery people will come and deliver it to thedoor.” Typically, delivery takes a few hours, depending on the retailer and the city and the fleetof delivery vehicles available.
“But it is a very simple proposition, which is very important, where we can simplify things forthe customer, just to say ‘I want these products today’,” Carrington stressed.
He continued: “It is going very well – we are getting great customer feedback. It is anexperiment at the moment, live in six cities, but we are hoping to expand geographically; we arehoping to partner with people in other countries that we go to with other retailers. Essentially itis nothing new – we have seen this kind of service before; we just revamped it for the modernworld.”
Explaining why Google had got involved, he said: “We have got a good history of solving bigproblems, for example maps, or search, or driverless cars. We have got great partnerships with alot of retailers out there in the market place. We have got amazing products out there already,like maps, and traffic signals, which are probably the best in the world, and we are also investingin the car space as well, with driverless cars. So all these different factors mean we think thatwe can play in this space.
“For the users, they get a very simple proposition; they get they get to buy the products thatthey want and get them delivered to their door without actually having to go and physically buythem themselves. Some people may find difficulty to get out of about, or have very busy lifestyles,so it is a great product for them to have out there as well.”
Referencing the VP of commerce at Walgreens, he said that if you ask your customer what theywant, they may not tell you that they want same-day shopping, “but in fact when you shop and getsame-day delivery, customers absolutely adore it. We get amazing feedback from it, and more peoplehave a higher propensity to buy from those shops.”
Other results from the experiment so far include: 97% of orders that are taken out arecompleted; 94% of people are buying the same amount or more than previously from the retailers; 99%of orders are being delivered on time; and 50% of the shoppers are repeat shoppers.
“And when you see the results on mobile, the results are much higher as well,” Carrington added.So far, 40% of orders are on mobiles, “so not quite that tipping point yet, but they are spendingthree times more when it is a mobile order rather than a desktop order, and with 90% repeatpurchases as well – so a much, much higher propensity for people to repeat and buy more. And thetransactions were a third bigger as well.”
Carrington continued: “So, it is a great experiment, and we are really, really happy with it; wewant to expand it out there. We think people are prepared to pay a premium for same-day delivery.”At the moment, he said Google charged £10 a month, or one-off payments of $4.95.
“I think that price is not necessarily such a great sticking point – but we have got to reallyfind out what the motivations for people are,” Carrington added. “Instantaneous purchase has reallyexcited a lot of people that we are working with as well, and the 40-odd partners are very pleasedwith the result that we have got.”
As reported in CEP-Research last week, Dino Rocos, operations director for UK retailer JohnLewis, told the conference that he felt there were increasing signs that 24-hour delivery would nolonger be fast enough for some customers in the near future, with companies increasingly lookingtowards 12-hour and eight-hour delivery cycles.
However, separately at the conference, representatives from the German, French, and UK onlineretail associations agreed that deferred services that were free to the consumer were continuing tobe most popular, and likely to continue to be for some time.
Stéphane Tomczak, head of eLogistics at Fevad and eCommerce Europe, said: “The more options yougive to customers, the more likely they are to have the option they want – and the preference isthat there is no charge. But the first issue is price, and this is the same across all these threecountries – which make up two thirds of European e-commerce.
“If you offer delivery services with just a few pounds difference (in price), consumers willswing massively towards the economy service. The reason that ‘click and collect’ has become sopopular in France is because it is free.”
