Through new initiatives ranging from social couponing to stronger e-commerce offerings and enhanced labeling, consumer packaged goods retailers and manufacturers are showing an eagerness to engage digitally oriented consumers and an awareness that they need to teach their old marketing tools some new tricks, according to Direct Marketing News. http://www.dmnews.com/cpg-brands-dive-headfirst-into-digital-sphere/article/210174/
Editor’s Insight: This report notes that consumers are buying more food and other one-time-use items more frequently over the Internet. Consumers are becoming more comfortable buying products over the Internet while the cost to manufacturers and retailers for offering e-commerce has decreased.
There are many implications here for refreshment services. Refreshment service operators have big opportunities with e-commerce since they already offer many products consumers use.
Within the refreshment services industry, the coffee service segment has been the most aggressive in expanding into e-commerce, even though only a minority of coffee service operators have done this to date.
The September Automatic Merchandiser has a feature article on a New York City area coffee service operators that has successfully expanded into e-commerce. To access the article, go to: http://www.vendingmarketwatch.com/article/10327287/evans-defines-ocs-professionalism-in-metro-new-york. 09-02-11 By Elliot Maras
