While the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in economic uncertainty for the retail sector, local retail giant Game says the crisis has put e-commerce at the forefront of its retail strategy, resulting in over 70% growth in online sales in the past year.
The Massmart-owned retailer, billed as the second largest retail group in Africa after Shoprite, says its brand has undergone constant reform and innovation to ensure it’s in line with evolving consumer needs.
The retailer, which is in the process of phasing out its fresh and frozen food sections, last year migrated to the SAP S4/HANA cloud system, in a bid to improve its data analytics capabilities, business process efficiencies and security across its online platforms.
In a telephonic interview with ITWeb, Paris Philippou, VP: Game e-commerce and digital, said during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the retailer saw a significant increase in traffic and sales across its Web and mobile platforms, as more South Africans took to digital channels.
In line with its overall turnaround strategy premised on “Retail Reimagined”, the retailer is on an aggressive digital push, to adopt a more innovative approach to address customer needs and improve customer experience, he noted.
“This calendar year, we’ve seen around 90% growth in our total online transactions already and we’ve also seen better traffic on our Web site – 90% growth from last year. There’s been significant shifts in customer behaviour and the good thing about that shift is that if we are intent on doing a really good job of meeting our customers’ expectations through e-commerce, digital and the omni-channel, we will ultimately be successful in strengthening our relationship with them and that’s critical for us as in terms of growth,” explained Philippou.
Collectively, Massmart-owned chain stores Makro, Game and Builders surpass R1.1 billion online annual revenue, making the group one of the biggest retailers online in SA, if not the biggest, he adds.
Game is now on an aggressive push towards improving some basic elements across its digital platforms, including revamping its mobile app, increasing its third-party delivery partner network and ensuring customers easily find what they’re looking for online.
While the retailer’s mobile app has anywhere between 50 000 and 100 000 users, Philippou points out it was not designed for a fully-fledged online shopping experience and Game is now working on a “mobile first approach”, which will see the app providing more flexibility for customers.
“A mobile-first approach is critical because 70% of our customers visit our Web site via mobile. We also have a significant amount of customers who research online but purchase offline. So we are looking at re-evaluating our proposition with the Game app to focus on providing a better shopping experience, and enabling click-and-collect solutions that are robust.
“At the moment, our app is more focused on offering coupons, vouchers and rewards, and the way it was built was to entice customers to walk into the stores and buy from us. As part of our omni-channel approach, we want to create multiple platforms that will, for example, enable customers to engage and shop via the app, the WhatsApp engagement channel or via our call centres, and for all platforms to work seamlessly together.”
With a network of over 120 traditional brick-and-mortar stores across Africa, there is a lot of merchandising and supply chain effort to make sure the retailer consistently increases its product categories of what is available online, while also ensuring the fulfilment aspect of the online shopping experience is a success.
Last year, the retailer partnered with delivery services Uber Eats and One Cart, to allow customers to order Game essential products online, and have them delivered to their doorstep. Game is now looking to add more delivery partners to its network.
“Fulfilment is about the ability to scale quickly and pick and pack orders and get them delivered – and the right technology plays an important part of that process. Broadening our range of delivery partners is an important element of how we scale our fulfilment service. We recently added WumDrop, which does direct deliveries to the customer and we want to rely more on those opportunities because it means more reliability and quicker deliveries,” concludes Philippou.
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