Meijer On Instacart...Retail Hijacking?
By Joel Albrizio
Meijer Was Marketed On The Instacart Platform Without Any Agreement With Meijer. Meijer Is A Shpt Online Shopping Member!
So now we enter the digital marketplace where all the perils of companies like Instacart become retail reality.
Insgtacart is representing retailers while the retailer may not even be aware Instacart is actually selling their own products to their own customers at a higher price point.
Correct, without any formal contractual relationship or POS pricing access Instacart in the case of Meijer sells Meijer perishables and center store items.
Instacart Employees Are Not Meijer Trained Employees!
These Instacart employees may not even have any supermarket training at all. One thing for sure, Meijer & it's valuable branding mission has no control over these Instacart employees, their training or who gets hired. However, the Instacart employee is executing on the Meijer brand!
In Fact Instacart Is Profiting From The Meijer Brand.
Is the Instacart employee trained in the customer service, loyalty or frankly any of the Meijer programs.....No.
As a supermarket retailer companies like Meijer have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build prime locations and a trusted brand. Then without any formal agreement or training Instacart, a San Francisco based start-up jumps in and in essence hijacks the Meijer brand for its own retail sales advances.
So now let's dig deeper into the all important pricing model. When Instacart sells Meijer items like perishables are these Meijer prices or are these Instacart prices. One popular perishable item as an example is ground beef.
Meijer does all that they can to achieve the most attractive price point. What if Meijer building brand wants a retail on 80% lean ground beef at $$1.89 lb. and to be profitable, the consumer pays Instacart a retail of $2.89 lb.
Same Ground Beef Instacart Sells Meijer Ground Beef At $1.00 Per Pound Higher! Lower Left See The Meijer Ad Ground Beef Below....
See The Instacart/Meijer Up-charged Ad below...$1.00 lb. Higher!
Which price is most likely to optimize on a search engine? Meijer at $1.89 lb. or Meijer @ Instacart @ $2.89 lb.?
Does Instacart Have A Responsibility To Explain What Is Taking Place To The Consumer? Especially Where The Brand For Sale is Meijer...
While this is an article of opinion, I believe the retailer must have control over all food items within it's brand if for no other reason than food safety in this dangerous health environment.
Every retailer must have control over every item it sells and routinely investigate and approve all of the possible routes those food items might take on its way to the consumer.
Remember, in the case of Meijer, when something goes wrong with the Meijer customer Instacart has become involved with, Meijer has no idea what went wrong and or why?
While this may seem a stretch, Meijer actually has little control over whether Instacart is actually selling the consumer Meijer products. I guess as a consumer you just have to take Instacart's word for where the items were actually sourced?
When most of us purchase from a supermarket items as sensitive as food, we both want and need to know who is really selling us that food and who really stands behind what we feed our families.
This is an article based on my opinion only. I enjoy writing what I see in the retail food marketplace from time to time when I feel followers will find some relevance.
Many have asked why I choose to write about what I see in the supermarket industry today and my ideas. At Bad-Adz Digital, PreparedFoodPhotos.com & Adlife we believe great ideas and the resulting branding will give new life and direction to any company. So for that reason we chose to open the discussion.
Yes, I understand I probably misspelled something or butchered the English language in a few places, the goal however was to open your minds to new ideas.
Joel Albrizio - Bad-Adz Digital, Bad-AdzVideos.com, PreparedFoodPhotos.com & Adlife
