Should retailers just say ‘no’ to Instacart?


By special arrangement with the authors, here is an excerpt from the forthcoming book “Instacart for CMOs,” launching on March 10th.
Many traditional retailers are living on borrowed time, with their own ecommerce efforts lagging far behind online marketplaces. But is the current reliance on Instacart to handle the notoriously challenging “last mile” of retail fulfillment really all that bad?
Instacart solves several thorny challenges for retailers, like:
- Providing the required technology, which many retailers are lagging behind on.
- Avoiding the profit-sucking “last mile”. Delivery costs are the biggest hurdle to profitability, particularly in online grocery. Instacart has already done the hard work to figure out factors like “route density,” optimizing routes and scaling nationally;
- Instacart is a demand aggregator. The farther behind retailers get with meeting customer needs with a native solution, the more appealing it is to simply join the shopper where they are already transacting.
While it may be easier to join Instacart than beat them, there are also compelling reasons for retailers to be wary of ceding control.
- Losing the customer connection: personal info, product info and household info all sits with Instacart. Retailers lose both their current and future direct relationship with the customer.
- The quandary of servicing both in-store “gig” shoppers who need to find items and exit the store quickly and the end customer shopping for themselves. Each has vastly different preferences and measures of value for retailers.
- Margin erosion: Instacart charges a five to eight percent platform fee to retailers. Some choose to pass this on as a markup; others absorb it and lose margin.
- Instacart may put vendor allowances and retail media spend in jeopardy as brands shift their marketing budgets online.
These challenges beg the question, should retailers build their own in-home delivery platforms?
Retailers could leap-frog both their competitors and Instacart by investing in next-generation technology. While Instacart’s current business model limits their efficiency to traditional store layouts and locations, retailers could flip the script through new concepts like dark stores and micro-fulfilment.
Ultimately, more revenue for Instacart is more revenue for the retailers that sell there. For retailers who do not have their own mature last-mile delivery play, they would otherwise be losing home-delivery sales right now. Larger retailers who are thinking strategically are likely to believe that they should eventually own the fulfillment process, or at least white-label it. And even with the hefty price tag of building a last-mile delivery capability, retailers could make that investment back with online advertising revenue — a highly profitable revenue stream.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Do you expect to see pushback from retailers over fees associated with third-party fulfillment services or the collection/sharing of customer information? Should retailers working with Instacart or other third-party delivery services plan to transition to fulfilling orders on their own?
Join the Discussion!
22 Comments on "Should retailers just say ‘no’ to Instacart?"
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Managing Director, GlobalData
For many retailers Instacart and similar platforms represent a quick way of moving into the e-commerce arena without massive capital costs and logistical investments. For others, Instacart is a way of managing increased e-commerce volumes alongside their own online operations. Both of these things are particularly important in food.
The downside is a loss of control, sometimes a lack of data from transactions, platform fees, and having lost of third-party shoppers coming into store to pick orders.
How retailers balance these things depends on their financial status, size, proposition and so many other things. Trader Joe’s ditched Instacart some time ago and has not really suffered as a result. Sprouts has partnered with Instacart and is pleased with increased reach.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer, though on balance I think developing internal capability is probably better if scale allows for it.
Managing Partner, Advanced Simulations
The bigger question may be, “What do we expect will happen if/when the pandemic ends?” For those who believe life has changed irrevocably, either get your game on now or give up and go to Instacart. Different story for those who believe life will go back to normal. Think less about delivery and more about curbside pickup.
Consulting Partner, TCS
It’s not an easy situation that retailers find themselves in. At one level, Instacart and other delivery services are like payment methods. Retailers are expected to support various methods, or customers will go to those retailers that Instacart supports. Services like Instacart are not merely delivering, they are actively building a customer base of their own by giving consumers incentives to shop in participating retailers.
The largest of the retailers probably can build their own last-mile delivery network, but it is not going to be their core competence and will be a huge distraction, even if they are otherwise capable. For regional and local retailers, they don’t have much choice.
Retailers have to move up in the value chain to build their private label brands, sourcing, and assortment, to find a level of differentiation that customers are willing to pay a premium for and absorb these additional costs.
President, Sageberry Consulting/Senior Forbes Contributor
There are many strategic issues to sort through in deciding whether to outsource home delivery or maintain more control–and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. But clearly Instacart can offer scale and scope advantages that most retailers can never match. The big issue, though, is all about margin. So long as most home delivery involves human beings picking and packing products and then driving them to someone’s home or office in a vehicle, it will always be materially more expensive than consumers doing the work themselves. During COVID-19 many retailers did not price this in, so it remains to be seen the degree to which pricing will become “more rational,” both to the end consumer and from Instacart (and others) to their clients, how much demand will persist at higher levels and how retailers will merchandise their way to better margins.
President, SSR Retail LLC
Instacart offered an easy solution for retailers to engage in e-commerce – but at the cost of shopper relationships and margin. What appeared to be a quick solution for retailers may lead to their demise as Instacart gains power with both customers and suppliers, and stores become little more than fulfillment centers.
Principal, Retail Technology Group
There are many functions that retailers should not take on if they do not have a dedicated team to manage them. For many retailers, e-commerce order fulfillment is one of those functions. Measuring the benefits of outsourcing a function against the benefits of building it in-house and then measuring the true costs is where the answer lies.
Consultant, Strategist, Tech Innovator, UX Evangelist
This is the same old make or buy technology question retailers have faced for decades.
In the past, retailers vented at Amazon’s success when in reality they sat back and missed the opportunity to seize the moment and become digital destinations. Then they scrambled to do something.
It’s simply a business decision: take what you get with a plug-in solution–good and bad, or forgo the dependency and own the entire experience. The farther down the wrong fork in the road one goes, the more challenging it is to turn back. It’s a crucial decision with impact that needs to be considered 5-10-15 years into the future, considering that the wrong choice may be fatal.
EVP Thought Leadership, Marketing, WD Partners
The four cons outweigh the three pros to me, easily. Having said that, many retailers are not in a strong enough financial or organizational position to jettison the margin suckers, so it’s a moot point. This is another example of how a lack of foresight or innovative fortitude cost many brands in the end. BOPIS and delivery were already a pretty big “thing” before COVID-19 but, lacking the aforementioned skill sets, just doing nothing seemed like a good idea. However the old retail mantra about the wisdom of being a “fast second” in terms of rapidly moving ideas was already out the window. As Les Wexner used to say, “I’m afraid to stop and smell the roses — I could get hit by a truck.” Exactly.
Co-founder, RSR Research
I think Instacart has done a really good job improving its software platform in the past year or two.
I also know (as they clearly disclose) when I’m paying “higher than in-store prices” for my groceries. So the question arises, “Is it worth $20 on a $200 order to avoid going to the grocery store?” For me, generally yes. I am about to start shopping again, I think, as the grocer I would now prefer to use is not available on Instacart,
I think grocers can do a fine job replenishing their products based on what leaves the building. Have they lost control of their customer base? Well, I would argue they’ve never done too much with loyalty data anyway, so what? It’s one segment of retail where you find out quickly what’s selling and what isn’t whether you “know your customer” or not. Localization is not the same as personalization anyway.
Retail Industry Strategy, Esri
Founding Partner, Merchandising Metrics
For many retailers, it would be impossible to develop their own fulfillment and delivery systems that would achieve the scale and efficiency necessary to be profitable. The first couple of players in the delivery game had the advantage of being the only game in town, and charged what the market would bear. Now fulfillment and delivery are becoming table stakes and more competitive at the same time. I like the quote that I think is attributed to Jeff Bezos: “Your margin is my opportunity.” The competitive market will find or create a fulfillment and delivery process that recognizes fees have a role. If the U.S. Postal Service was run by a true entrepreneur, that person would recognize that the existing USPS infrastructure would lend itself perfectly to the LOCAL delivery of something other than bills and parcels.
Vice President, Research at IDC
Instacart has done a great job with their platforms and in turn serviced a critical delivery need for retailers. Larger retailers will have the choice to build their own systems, but pushback is inevitable as many retailers need to integrate customer engagement in the store with online experiences. The natural evolution of the model will be sharing of customer information as this is the critical piece for retailers. The other factors including price hikes and delivery fees will be distributed back to the consumer over time as part of the service cost, and this will become standard. The retailer can only absorb these costs for so long. The second question of build vs buy depends on the retailer’s focus on tech and size. The question for them will be “is there any advantage in reinventing the wheel?” For a few retailers the answer will be yes but, for the majority, Instacart or similar services with shared data and customer engagement will be sufficient.
President, b2b Solutions, LLC
The short answer is it depends. It depends on the retailer’s desire and capability to replicate the information systems that Instacart already has in place. Working with Instacart is easy. Creating your own system and adapting your fulfillment model is not.
The one advantage to doing it in-house is the retailer maintains a direct relationship with the customer. This may not seem that important now but will when we are able to exit the pandemic. When we do, Instacart is not going to go away. It will take the information it has gathered and use it to create its own source of product and compete with its former customers.
Professor of Food Marketing, Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph's University
Instacart is a good example of buying versus building expertise. While the concerns regarding Instacart are real, the solution is not simple and in the end, it will require a build decision, which as noted is expensive. The tradeoff is the capital investment and operational management of a dedicated system versus the fees and limitations noted of an Instacart relationship.
Chief Commerce Strategy Officer, Publicis
Chairman Emeritus, Relex Solutions
Founder | CEO, Female Brain Ai & Prefeye - Preference Science Technologies Inc.
Retail Tech Marketing Strategist | B2B Expert Storytelling™ Guru | President, VSN Media LLC
Vice President, Research at IDC
Ditto for Ms. Masters….
Chief Operating Officer, Antuit.ai
CFO, Weisner Steel
Is it better to own your own fleet of cargo planes? How ’bout your own ad agency … or TV network? Sure, it’s always “best” to be a big company, able to do everything in house, developing SOTA and/or proprietary solutions while simultaneously saving money, but few are. Most are smaller, and have to choose between using outside providers, for technology and economies of scale, or trying to do things in house, with lesser tools … or not doing things at all.
That having been said, there are probably companies that could go out on their own, but are still “making do” … while their IT and logistics departments spend their time making excuses.
Contributing Editor, RetailWire; Founder and CEO, Vision First
While Instacart gives retailers a quick start fulfilling and delivering orders, the ultimate costs (fees, loss of customer touch-points and a glut of in-store pickers) are too high. Retailers need to control their own destiny and implement their own systems and processes for online order and delivery.