Mashup Mom Reviews Peapod Home Delivery - And Likes It, Mostly

Mashup Mom.com a popular site written by Rachel Singer Gordon  launched in January 2009 to provide couponing, frugality, and work-at-home strategies and advice. Rachel is also an extreme couponer and the author of Complete Idiot's Book to Couponing. Rachel recently tested and reviewed Peapod's home delivery service, here are her observations.

Search
According to Rachel, search was both fast and simple, and she found a decent selection of brands in most categories. For example Rachel cites "A search for “cocoa powder,” for instance, gives me four choices at varying price points, all fairly comparable to what you might find at a high/low grocery store at regular prices." Rachel also observed "The search also helps you narrow down your choices — I typed in “coconut” and it gave me several suggestions, helping me get to “shredded coconut” fairly quickly rather than having to browse through everything coconut-related."

Online User Interface
Rachel observes, "Just put in the quantity you want, hit buy, and it adds the item to your cart. Peapod nicely keeps a running tally of your cart over on the right-hand side of the screen, so you can remove items or change quantities from there at any time. Whoever designed this put some thought into the interface and user experience. I would, however, add prices to the individual items on the running tally so that shoppers trying to stay under budget could more easily see what to remove and tweak."

Delivery
Rachel was surprised that Peapod delivers on Sundays, but concludes that it does make sense to deliver when people will be home to receive it. She stated that Peapod's delivery windows are huge (hers is 4:30-9:30 PM) — but you can login the day of to get a shorter two-hour window, plus sign up to be alerted when they’re close. She likes being able to placed the order on Friday night but make changes and updates to it until almost midnight the day before delivery day. So if I a customer forgets or run out of anything, it is super easy to add it.

Final conclusion about using the site 
Overall Rachel liked the service and the ease of use but, being frugal, had a difficult time with prices including the delivery fee "The delivery fee is killer, so will become more cost effective with larger orders". However she did observe, "The prices were not ideal bargain-shopper prices, but also weren’t as high as I’d assumed before really digging in and using the site."

Rachel's conclusion is the Peapod site is a "usable' alternative to grocery store shopping. Commenters on her blog were far more enthusiastic and cited extreme convenience, friendly drivers, frequent delivery coupons and being able to avoid impulse buying, which often offsets higher costs, as terrific value ads. This experience and the reviews adds support to the emerging and growing trend of online shopping and home delivery of grocery items. What has been your online grocery shopping experience? Do you agree with Rachel?

What is in The Mind of Millenials?

SymphonyIRI has released a new Times and Trends report focused on Millenials. At a population of 50 million in the U.S., millennials, defined as adults aged 18-34, are demonstrating defining characteristics that impact their shopping and purchasing behaviors.These characteristics include:

• Millennial shoppers demonstrate a more cautious and volatile outlook compared to other age groups. This reflects the environment in which they live at a critical juncture in their adult lives.
• Millennials tend to head larger-than-average sized households and relatively low levels of household income. They are 11 percent more likely to have incomes of $25,000-$49,000, 14 percent more likely to have incomes of $50,000-$99,000, but 18 percent less likely to earn six figures than other Americans.
• Millennials are coping through several money-saving activities. This group is 46 percent more likely to use at-home beauty treatments to save money, and 31 percent more likely to cook from scratch or with limited convenience foods to save money. They are also 18 percent more likely to "self-treat" where possible to avoid spending money on doctor's visits.
• Communication through new media has an outsized impact on millennials. As expected, new media is essential to millennials' process of learning about CPG products. When making brand decisions. millennials are 262 percent more likely than the average shopper to be influenced by smartphone apps, 247 percent are more likely to be influenced by blogs or social networking sites, and 216 percent are more likely to be influenced by in-store touch screen displays. volatility and showing less fiscal confidence than average shoppers.

SymphonyIRI  states understanding these shoppers is critical to CPG and retail success, since millennials are predicted to spend $65 billion on CPG products during the next decade. "The Shopper Sentiment Index was created as another lens to study shopper behavior," said Susan Viamari, editor of Times & Trends, SymphonyIRI. "Shoppers of all ages, income levels and demographics continue to evaluate and evolve their shopping rituals based on an economy that shows some signs of strength, but still many ongoing signs of weakness."

"Millennial shoppers remain an important group to consider when creating pricing and marketing plans," says John McIndoe, senior vice president of marketing, SymphonyIRI. "A nuanced group that behaves much like the savvy, cost-conscious consumers of the recent recession, they are very different in how they interact with CPG brands and in how they seek deals. Understanding the unique characteristics of The Millennial Generation, or any group of shoppers, is essential to building powerful and lasting relationships."

To download the report, visit: http://www.symphonyiri.com/Insights/ArticleDetail/tabid/117/ItemID/1502/View/Details/Default.aspx