People wearing masks shop at a grocery store in Moncton, N.B., on Wednesday, September, 22, 2021. Online grocery orders surged during the pandemic as Canadians heeded public health warnings to limit outings. As stores quickly ramped up online grocery and delivery services, shoppers largely tolerated product substitutions and mishaps.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christopher Katsarov
Anjali Rego doesn’t mind some online grocery order substitutions. Swap out regular tomatoes for cherry tomatoes? No problem.
But other changes irk her. Switch regular meat for a plant-based substitute? No way.
“I don’t mind if you give me a different kind of tomato. But don’t goof up my meat,” says the Mississauga, Ont., resident.
“And if I order one per cent milk, don’t give me two per cent.”
Online grocery orders surged during the pandemic as Canadians heeded public health warnings to limit outings. As stores quickly ramped up online grocery and delivery services, shoppers largely tolerated odd product substitutions and mishaps.
But consumers are becoming increasingly impatient with online grocer order errors, experts say.
Stores that don’t improve online grocery blunders could lose sales — especially as supply chain snarls and a sixth wave of COVID-19 could see the need for substitutions rise, they say.
“In online grocery, customer experience is all about how you fulfil the order,” says Frank Kouretas, chief product officer at Orckestra.
Get it wrong and new customers may avoid shopping for groceries online again, while veteran online food shoppers may switch stores, he says.
“From a customer’s perspective, it’s hard to understand why a store got it wrong,” Kouretas says. “And it’s easy to get it wrong without the right technology in place.”
Orckestra, an e-commerce solutions provider from MDF Commerce Inc. based in Longueuil, Que., has developed a technical solution to address the problem of grocery substitutions.
“Substitutions are unique to grocery,” Kouretas says. “Sports Experts won’t substitute my (Nike) Air Force 1’s for Adidas — they either have them in stock or they don’t.
“But in grocery you have volatile inventory and substitutions happen … this is why you hear horror stories about substitutions.”
Tales of online grocery order substitutions have taken on near-urban legend status: Ground beef instead of tofu, candles instead of light bulbs, flour instead of gluten free baking mix, multiple heads of Napa cabbage instead of baby bok choy.
Others involve mixed up quantities, such as 10 kilograms of bananas rather than 10 bananas, or more mundane but nevertheless irritating swaps like fresh oregano instead of fresh cilantro.
“The decision on how to substitute is complex and highly personal to each customer,” Srini Venkatesan, executive vice-president of Walmart Global Tech, said in a blog post last June.
Take a store that’s run out of cherry yogurt, for example. Whether to choose another fruit flavour, like strawberry or blueberry, or opt instead for plain or a different brand altogether is not a simple choice and can vary from customer to customer.
“There are nearly 100 different factors that can go into that decision,” Venkatesan says in his blog post. “Trying to account for all of these would not only be too difficult, but it would also be incredibly time consuming.
“If the wrong choice is made, it can negatively impact customer satisfaction and increase costs.”
Most stores allow customers to choose whether or not to allow substitutions. But the default is usually set to allow substitutions and changing it can be cumbersome.
Stores refund an item if a customer is not satisfied with a substitution, but the hassle of requesting the refund for customers and the loss of a potential sale for stores makes it a lose-lose solution.
The situation has prompted some retailers to turn to technology and artificial intelligence to help personal shoppers, sometimes called packers or pickers, make the right choice for customers and eliminate the guesswork
Orckestra, for example, has developed what Kouretas calls an “order picking application.”
“It provides the right feedback to make sure that the person picking the orders doesn’t make mistakes,” he says.
Technology can improve both online grocery order substitutions and customer satisfaction, especially when it’s tailored to the retailer, Kouretas says.
Orckestra works with big grocers like IGA and Aldi, a German discount supermarket chain, to improve their online grocery ordering and picking system.
Kouretas says employee training is also critical.
“I can’t stress enough the importance of training,” he says. “Having trained employees who know the store, who know the products and who understand how to substitute products will improve outcomes.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2022.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
