When it comes to getting its product into consumers’ hands, Hershey is thinking beyond the traditional planogram. The Pennsylvania-based packaged confectionery and snacks giant told analysts on an earnings call Thursday (Feb. 3) discussing its fourth quarter 2021 results that it is prioritizing data analytics to grow its reach.
“In terms of digital as a big investment area, specifically we’ve had a big focus in advancing our capabilities to deliver more sophisticated targeting and get more efficiency in media,” Hershey President and CEO Michele Buck told analysts on a call.
The move comes as online grocers boost their ad capabilities and the eGrocery market grows. Instacart, for its part, has been stepping up its marketing offerings for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands, offering new branded pages and display ads.
Read more: Instacart Partners With WPP to Supplement Delivery Revenue With Ad Sales
Additionally, leading grocery retailers have announced similar initiatives, introducing in-grid sponsored product placements and partnering with contextual commerce specialists to integrate shoppable moments into consumers’ daily online routines.
See more: Grocers Leverage Contextual Commerce to Expand Purchasing Opportunities
According to data from PYMNTS’ October study, The How We Eat Playbook, created in collaboration with Carat from Fiserv, 72% of grocery shoppers now order groceries online for curbside pickup or home delivery.
Read more: Restaurants and Grocers See Path to Picking up 200M New Customers
Now, Hershey’s strategy in terms of boosting its digital reach involves moving beyond the company’s in-house capabilities to take advantage of external companies’ expertise in the space, combining first- and third-party data to improve personalization.
“In the past, we relied on our own internal datasets that we would analyze and do traditional marketing mix modeling kinds of activities, but we’ve really created what we think is a proprietary approach to what we’re doing, investing in other data sources and then integrating them into ours, building the tools that allow us to do that, utilizing the cloud across what we’re doing,” Buck said.
Additionally, on the distribution side, the company is focusing on boosting its performance at self-checkout aisles.
“Self-checkout queuing lines are a big area of focus,” Buck said. “Right now, we’re seeing a lot of retailers, given the pressure on labor, focusing there.”
Indeed, demand for self-checkout is high, according to data from PYMNTS’ September report “Today’s Self-Service Shopping Journey: The New Retail Expectation,” created in collaboration with Toshiba.
See more: Consumers Want Self-Service Checkout Options But Rarely Get to Use Them
The study, which surveyed over 2,000 U.S. consumers about their shopping behaviors, found that one in three grocery shoppers had used self-checkout for their previous purchase, and a third of those who had used traditional checkout methods only did so because it was the only option available. Additionally, about eight in 10 millennials and bridge millennials and 86% of Generation Z-ers reported that they want nontraditional checkout options, as did 71% of Generation X-ers and about half of all baby boomers and seniors.
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