Here are the top 5 e-commerce retailers

Food retailers have made great strides in improving their e-commerce experiences, but there is still room to better tailor their offerings to meet customer needs.

The 2023 Ipsos Ecommerce Experience Report finds that the leaders in curbside delivery and pickup are Walmart and Target, though several traditional supermarket operators, including Albertsons, Food Lion and H-E-B, also do well in some aspects of their e-commerce services.

“E-commerce is really about convenience, connection and completeness,” said Brad Christian, head of strategic growth, U.S. channel performance at Ipsos, listing what he called the “three Cs” of e-commerce. “If it’s not a convenient and flexible way to do business with your brand, then I’m less likely to want to use it.”

Ipsos The report is based on a fall 2023 survey of 1,200 Americans, a mystery shopping series, and an analysis and ranking of key factors influencing purchase decisions across online, online/in-store pickup and curbside pickup.

Here are the five best-performing food retail chains highlighted in the report:

Walmart

Walmart scored highest in both delivery (tied with Target) and curbside pickup in the Ipsos report, a significant increase from the previous year’s report. Its investments in technology to help increase efficiency and streamline processes over the past two years have clearly yielded positive results.

“As we began 2023, we saw brands like Walmart and Target making significant investments in their e-commerce offerings, with Walmart in particular focusing on e-commerce store automation,” Christian said.

He says using automation to support tasks such as real-time monitoring of inventory levels and out-of-stocks can help retailers improve order completeness and accuracy.

Walmart also scored well when it came to the ease of delivery and curbside pickup compared to the in-store shopping experience. With a score of 75% for ease of delivery, the retailer came in second behind Aldi, which scored 78% (compared to 60% for the grocery industry as a whole). When it came to ease of curbside pickup, Walmart and Kroger tied for second place with a score of 77%, behind Amazon Fresh at 79%.

Objective

Target has also invested significantly in e-commerce capabilities and has become adept at driving efficiency by using its stores to fulfill online orders.

“At any given time, Target may fulfill 96.8% of its online orders through its brick-and-mortar stores, not necessarily its distribution centers,” Christian said.

An Insider Intelligence report from last year explained that Target is investing in expanding its network of “sorting centers,” which collect orders from up to 40 different stores and group them into delivery lanes (often using Shipt, its internal delivery network) to optimize efficiency and increase delivery density.

The Albertsons

Albertsons was named a “brand to watch” in the Ipsos report, highlighting improvements made to its delivery and curbside pickup operations.

The retailer has shared the Brand to Watch distinction for its delivery service with Target and Walmart, and has been listed alongside Walmart as a Brand to Watch for curbside pickup.

Albertsons was among the top performers in many areas of the report, perhaps none more important than indicating that customers will use the service again. Albertsons was the top performer in delivering reuse intention, with a score of 61%, far outpacing the overall industry score of 44%.

Albertsons also scored well above average when it came to delivery communications, and was the top pick-up company for curbside pickup communications, with a score of 97%.

“One of the things we looked at is whether the e-commerce experience was better than physically coming into a store,” Christian said. “Is it more or less problematic? For our star performers like Target, Walmart and Albertsons, very few consumers suggested that there were any challenges or issues, and that it was definitely a better, more convenient experience than physically coming into a store.”

Food lion

Christian believes that perhaps one of the most important aspects of the e-commerce shopping experience for consumers is the communication between the retailer or third-party shopping service and the customer.

Food Lion stood out in the area of ​​communication for both delivery and pickup, the report found, with scores of 83% and 95%, respectively. Its 83% score for satisfaction with communication (text, email, notifications) for delivery tied it for first with Whole Foods, and its 95% rating for curbside pickup tied it for second, behind Albertsons.

“There’s a certain point where it’s best to communicate with a customer,” Christian said, noting that too much back-and-forth with a customer during the journey can ruin the entire experience.

HEB

A handful of retailers outperformed the industry in a few select areas, but HEB stood out by ranking at the top of nearly every metric for both delivery and curbside pickup.

The retailer came in just behind delivery leaders Target and Walmart, and tied with Albertsons. Additionally, 76% of consumers said they were satisfied with H-E-B’s communication, which exceeded the overall industry score of 72%, and 48% said they were likely to use the delivery service again, which exceeded the industry score of 44%.

When it comes to curbside pickup, H-E-B was in a three-way tie for second place with Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods, behind Walmart. Sixty-three percent of consumers said they would likely use H-E-B curbside pickup again, compared with 58% for the industry as a whole.