Shoppers paid to check supermarket shelves

Sue Mitchell

Jun 9, 2020

AFR

Consumer brands such as Coca-Cola Amatil are using crowd-sourced real-time data to check out-of-stocks and prices in stores.

Australian food and grocery suppliers are paying shoppers to check stock levels and prices in stores as the coronavirus crisis triggers a major shake-up on supermarket shelves.

Singapore-based retail technology company Trax Retail has formed an alliance with crowd-sourcing platform Snooper, which pays about 75,000 shoppers, students and retirees to take photos of products on supermarket shelves and upload them through an app.

Trax – known by retailers overseas for its tiny shelf-mounted wireless cameras – uses cloud-based image recognition technology and machine learning to analyse the real-time data and check for out-of-stocks, compliance with promotions, merchandising and planogram execution.

Trax Retail has formed an alliance with Snooper to collect and analyse crowd-sourced real-time data for food and grocery suppliers.

The alliance with Snooper was formed during the pandemic, when consumer product companies were reluctant or unable to send field staff into grocery stores due to health and safety concerns amid panic hoarding.

Trax Australia and New Zealand country manager Aaron Ecclestone said after the pandemic the alliance would help consumer product companies audit more stores, including those in regional areas, at lower cost.

“What we aim to do is provide much wider visibility at lower cost, to provide a greater return on investment,” he said.

“With geographic complexity in Australia and to an extent New Zealand our customers have less than 10 per cent visibility of stores and they’re making big decisions based on that small sample.

“In Australia we see very high labour costs and to operate your own field [teams] is expensive. Providing a flexible and agile workforce in a cost-efficient way allows our customers to have a much broader visibility of the market.

“The problem has always existed and COVID-19 has accelerated a problem that was already there.”

Crowd-sourced real-time data complements rather than replaces field teams. When problems are identified, consumer goods companies send field staff into stores to rectify out-of-stocks, poor merchandising and non-compliance with promotions, which can dent sales and margins.

“Because of the high cost of going into a store there needs to be something actionable for that field rep or merchandiser to do. What we aim to do is provide knowledge of those gaps and give the insights for the reps to be able to action,” Mr Ecclestone said.

Trax and Snooper customers include Coca-Cola Amatil, Procter & Gamble, Mars Wrigley and Mars Petcare, A2 Milk, Ferrero, Sanitarium, L’Oreal and Kellogg’s.

During lockdown, amid massive job losses in the hospitality sector, the number of people downloading the Snooper app soared. Snooper users receive between $5 and $35 per mission, depending on the complexity of the task.

The alliance comes amid the biggest shake-up on supermarket shelves in decades as food and grocery retailers adjust ranges in response to changes in consumption triggered by the pandemic.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci and Coles chief Stephen Cain say shoppers are cooking more meals from scratch while also seeking the convenience of pre-prepared chilled meals.

“Going forward we think convenience will be key, home cooking will be key,” Mr Banducci said after the release of March quarter sales.

Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci is rewarding staff for their efforts during the pandemic.

Woolworths and Coles have expanded their chilled meals ranges in recent weeks and major range reviews are under way.

“The amount of space given to certain categories is definitely going to evolve,” Mr Ecclestone said. “We expect the composition of shelves to change, so it’s never been more important for clients to understand the shelves.”

Trax’s alliance with Snooper follows several recent acquisitions to build its global crowd network and image recognition capabilities. Trax, which is valued at $US1.2 billion ($1.7 billion), bought US sales and merchandising services firm Survey.com in March, US retail intelligence company Quri in January and image recognition company LenzTech in China last June.