Challenges Faced By The Online Grocery Stores Business

Due to great reliability, customers are getting more comfortable in ordering groceries online. Groceries are those items that are perishable, hence delivering them on time is a must for online grocery stores. Today, the world has shifted its ways and trends towards the online side. Every single activity can be done and accomplished through the online world. The internet has rapidly escalated its journey, turning trends in to necessity. Moreover, with the rapid advancements made by the technology today we know how hourly tasks are done in seconds.

Years ago, grocery shopping was a regular regime of visiting retail stores and supermarkets. It was a task that took hours from our productivity and even relaxing days, making us wander across each section of the store for us to pick our required grocery items. Those days are now long gone with the expansion of e-commerce business across the globe.

Online Grocery Stores:

However, most of the online retailers don’t seem to turn this huge market potential into one of the leading profit business. Since online retailers notice a low purchasing volume from online grocers, some tend to back off from online grocery business. They notice no pre-requisite for survival rather than opportunities for growth. Hence, online grocery stores still have a long way to battle through different hardships.

There are several challenges that the Online Grocery Store Karachi face today, for instance Asanbuy, etc. that are running a reliable online grocery store business in Karachi. An online grocery store in today’s age still faces a loss from start as compared to the traditional grocery business. There are certain headaches online retailers face when exposing themselves in the e-commerce sector with the mission to establish a successful online grocery store.

Some of the challenges online grocers face today are enlisted and discussed below:

Low Margins That Threatens The Online Success:

Despite the continuous growth for profitability, high costs and low margins immensely threatens the online grocery business.

Costly Promotions:

Online retailers try their best to target their audience through continuous promotions. However, the continuous price promotions bring down the weight of revenues for them. Moreover they lack the data and capabilities to target the right audience, hence turning promotions less effective and costly to the business.

Delivery Expenses:

There are certain grocery products people often prefer to buy in the traditional manner. Therefore, they remain unseen as an online product. Moreover, it is bitter fact that groceries are perishable items and need to be delivered within a specific time period. This has put a great pressure upon online retailers to deliver the groceries within time, increasing the delivery charges for them. Some websites often don’t charge the delivery fee in fear of losing customers. Hence, this increases the business cost at a high rate.

Increasing Competition:

There are a hundreds of online grocery websites that are competing with each other for leading revenues and increasing consumer loyalty. There are top online grocers in the market such as Daraz, Asanbuy etc. are in continuous strive to reach the top. Hence, small online grocery stores face great troubles to reach good profitability rates. They need to implement strategies that pull them out from the struggling stage and make them stand out of the crowd.

Customer Barriers to Online Grocery Stores:

There are certain things that acts as a barrier for customers to shop online. Some have a habit of choosing items through hand-picking method. They want to physically view things and touch them in order to know their freshness and make up their mind of buying them in bulk.

Online grocery stores have a fix prices even when they throw discounts, offers and deals. However, customers prefer a bargaining bonus from retailers that often helps them lessen the grocery prices to a great level. Moreover, they look for options through strolling in the entire retail store for good grocery options, discounts and promotions. Lastly, there are certain grocery items that customers always look to try. However, trying them online is a huge risk for some. Therefore, customers tend to step back when this scenario occurs.

Frauds:

A major reason that steps customers back when it comes to online grocery shopping is the fraud that occurs most of the time. There are hundreds of fake online grocery websites that run a fraud business, tricking customers into showcasing appealing grocery brands at reasonable prices. Certain fraud websites throw attractive discounts on highly demanding grocery products in order for customer to order them. Some show good quality products but unfortunately customers get delivered something opposite. Somewhere they receive low quality products, while other time they get delivered something strange that is not even a bit close to what they ordered. Some grocery websites do online frauds through payment methods, hacking the customer’s online transactions and bank details.