I was listening to eMarketer’s Behind the Numbers podcast when I heard about Walmart’s initiative to deliver groceries straight to your fridge. According to Walmart’s promotional video, it is partnering with smart lock systems, such as August Home, to give Walmart employees access to your home to leave packages in the foyer and deliver groceries to your fridge. When the employee enters the home, you can watch them leaving the packages and loading the groceries through your home security system. This is a great service augmentation in that it ensures your packages won’t be stolen, it saves you time from going to the grocery store and doing the shopping yourself and it provides security in the event that the employee is dishonest. It is currently being rolled out in Silicon Valley to test the new service offering but is planed to be rolled out nationally if it all goes well.
However, there’s still the fact that it’s a stranger in your home, loading your fridge. Even though this seems like the next logical step to catering to the busy lives of Americans, there are several things to consider:
- How will the employee know where to put the groceries? Getting someone to load your groceries in the fridge is great but if it takes you twice as long to find them later, is it really saving you time?
- How will the employee find parking? This service can be super useful in very busy cities, like New York City, who have below average grocery stores per person. Yet, parking will likely be an issue for the company.
- How will Walmart get consumers to bypass the creeper factor? Consumers are buying more and more safety systems, such as home security and smart locks, and still, Walmart expects consumers to simply let strangers into their home?
In the past several years, marketers have been trying to come up with ways to give consumers the personalization that they want without giving off a creepy vibe. Yet, consumers don’t seem to be ready yet for the intensity of personalization that they claim to want. Consumers want relevant ads but are uncomfortable when they hear that their online activity is being tracked. Consumers want apps to make their lives easier but are weirded out when they get push notifications based on their geographic location. Is having your groceries delivered to your fridge the next step of convenient and personalized service or is having a strange put your food in the fridge while you watch just creepy? Do you think that consumers will buy into this? Are there still other factors to consider?