Introduction
Retail businesses will need to arrange prompt last mile deliveries of groceries in varied settings. Solutions will have to fit densely populated urban settings as well as rural areas with poor connections. In addition to serving the digitally capable, often younger customers, they will need to consider consumers who prefer or cannot function without personal service.
At the same time, social and health care providers are trying to solve a very similar kind of challenge – how to cost-efficiently sustain and care for the ageing population living alone and often outside cities. Looking at these challenges in parallel is advisable. In the future, the logistics of care may intertwine with retail deliveries, and the combined service could be paid for directly from public social and health budgets. For retailers, a “groceries with care” service could be the starting point for a whole portfolio of home delivered services to customers from all age groups. Old age isn’t even the primary key factor, as anyone of us could require extra care at various points of our lives.
Next steps
Illness and old age come to mind first when we look at the times when a person might need more care, but people could need groceries with care when they have, for example, just had a baby; broken their arm; need to host a big party or transform their diet. Or are just overwhelmed with work. Traditionally, we’ve assumed that people have families to offer assistance and care but that just isn’t always the case anymore.
Opportunities
- Create new product and service ideas at the intersection of groceries and care, targeted to those in need of extra attention
- Look at your services from a senior POV
- Map out possibilities for services and collaborations with social and health services
