Grocer takes extra steps for customer experience

Roche Bros. may only operate 19 local stores, but still thinks big when it comes to meeting customer demand wherever it exists.



The Massachusettes-based chain has selected Unata to build an enhanced e-commerce and omnichannel shopping experience. The new e-commerce platform will be available at 18 of its Roche Bros. and Sudbury Farms stores, which will feature a home delivery option in eastern and central Massachusetts and a curbside pickup option at a growing number of locations.



Grocery is an intensely competitive vertical that in recent years has seen entries from mass merchandisers, dollar store chains, online retail platforms and delivery services, and even chains in unexpected verticals such as toys and hardware. For a local retailer like Roche Bros. to stand out in such a crowded and fragmented environment, it needs to offer a top-notch customer experience adapted to the channel-agnostic habits of today’s consumer. Its new highly personalized and digitized shopping environment is a critical step toward the differentiation needed for survival.



Unata’s proprietary machine-learning recommendation engine and personalized search technology will be at the heart of the new Roche Bros. e-commerce experience. With the platform’s ability to continuously learn about each shopper’s individual purchasing behaviors, the retailer intends to provide a gradually improving one-to-one personalized shopping experience across channels.



Specific targeted omnichannel features will include a one-to-one personalized homepage with the most relevant products and specials based on purchase history, individualized product recommendations that include items related to current shopping cart contents, personalized product catalogs, and one-to-one product notifications.



In addition, shoppers will be able to organize and browse products based on attributes such as organic and on-sale. On the back end, staff will be able to manage online orders through a new dashboard and can target and manage promoted content to their shoppers.



“We’re committed to building the best digital customer experience possible and believe Unata is the right partner to help us do that due to their deep category and digital expertise, long-term vision, collaborative working style and agile software development approach,” said Geoff Farringdon, senior e-commerce manager at Roche Bros.