Across the ditch, major bricks and mortar retailer Woolworths has launched its digital strategy to earn 1 billion dollars online in the next 2 years. Woolworths Australia is also the owner of Dick Smiths, and Progressive Enterprises which runs NZ supermarkets Countdown and Foodtown.
Woolworths ambitious online strategy that is set to revolutionise the physical “real products” business. Their stategy is varied and includes some pretty interesting new ideas like virtual supermarkets where you can buy your groceries with your iphone. Another component of its strategy involves selling a significant amount using a daily deals site.
Up till now major retailers have stayed away from providing really useful websites, let alone daily deals. But proof of concept and millions of consumer dollars have headed the way of daily deal sites. Large corporations tend to be slow to react to new ways of doing business, but the Woolies have already launched their deal site DoorBuster.com.au in January 2012.
DoorBuster has already been the subject of much controversy with the site having major failures on its launch day. Okay for a start-up business, but not for a billion dollar retail monster. Since then they have smoothed out the bumps and have a wide variety of products on sale from household appliances to grocery items. They have one main daily deal, but then dozens more “Instant Buys” underneath.
Will NZ retailers follow this trend? Will Woolworths-owned Progressive set up virtual supermarkets and a New Zealand Daily Deals website? I'd say there is a high chance if it goes well in the Australian market. Will their major competitor Foodstuffs (Pak n Save, New World) launch their own daily deal sites? What about more department stores launching sites like the Warehouse Daily Deals website?
