Albertsons Companies leans on Adobe Experience Cloud as it redefines the grocery shopping experience

Albertsons Cos. uses Adobe Experience Cloud to harness cross-channel data, producing insights that drive personalization and inform new services unique to the brand.

Image source: Albertsons Cos.

In a year where consumers spent a lot more time at home, many have dipped their toes into new ways of doing things. Whether out of necessity or curiosity, websites and apps took on new meaning for many of life’s daily tasks. Through Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, a real-time barometer of online shopping, we saw categories like home improvement grow 60 percent year-over-year. The breakout star however, was in groceries. In February 2021, online grocery shopping in the U.S. grew 230 percent compared to a pre-pandemic period.

COVID-19 quickly became a catalyst for consumer behaviors that were already bubbling to the surface. While pushing a cart still works for many grocery shoppers, some prefer going online for speed and efficiency. What we buy is changing as well, as more people look beyond ingredients and seek out meal-oriented offerings that save time and energy. As the future of grocery shopping comes into clearer view, Albertsons Cos. is one of the brands leading the charge. Digital sales for the grocer grew over 200 percent across all of 2020, while the company bolstered pickup and delivery options.

And while Albertsons Cos. grew its digital and omnichannel offerings to meet the needs of the pandemic, it also set the company up for the years ahead. A wide set of capabilities — from pickup kiosks to new app services — will allow the grocer to serve shoppers however they want, whenever they want. As these customer touchpoints grow, Albertsons Cos. is partnering with Adobe Experience Cloud to better harness cross-channel data, producing actionable insights that drive personalization and inform new services unique to the brand.

Albertsons Cos. and Adobe

For a company like Albertsons Cos. and its family of stores that include Safeway, Vons, Pavilions and others, personalization is increasingly important given the complex nature of grocery shopping. Every individual customer shops a little bit differently, at different frequencies and with unique needs. Well-orchestrated personalization means fewer situations where a customer forgets something on their shopping list — and more situations where shoppers are delighted with a targeted promotion or bundled offering. And unlike other industries, it is important for this to happen as close to real-time as possible.

And as customers move seamlessly from eCommerce to in-store, home delivery to pick up lockers, it becomes more challenging to connect with them in the moments where it counts most. With Adobe Analytics however, Albertsons Cos. is able to make sense of disparate sets of data and grasp shopper intent as people move amongst different channels. Actionable insights, available to any team, can inform new services and drive personalization via Adobe Target, while helping the company refine communications via Adobe Campaign. And with Adobe Experience Manager, teams can maintain consistency across any platform from the website and app, to digital signage.

“These days, it is no longer enough to simply keep pace with a changing customer base. We need to be a step ahead, looking around the corner to what people will expect in their grocery shopping experience,” shared Chris Rupp, EVP and chief customer and digital officer, Albertsons Companies. “After growing our eCommerce business 258 percent year over year, equipping over a thousand stores with curbside pickup, and refreshing our mobile app, we are investing now in differentiated services such as temperature-controlled pickup kiosks, two-hour fulfillment and even remote-controlled delivery robots. As we boost our omnichannel offerings, we are relying on Adobe Experience Cloud apps to help us get more value from data and leverage cross-channel insights to improve the overall shopping experience. Partners like Adobe will help Albertsons Cos. reimagine the future of grocery shopping.”