E-commerce has become a big part of our life in the last years, it has flourished since the start of the epidemic and it is currently in its golden era. Throughout this time, all businesses, particularly smaller ones, have had to adapt in leaps and bounds to processes that, in most cases, were unfamiliar to them but have become critical to their existence. The impact of this new trend has been so significant that it will no longer be considered an adaptation technique for the circumstance we found ourselves in during the epidemic; instead, e-commerce will become a permanent business strategy.
Among the major advantages of implementing this new strategy could be the capability or reaching a much wider audience and ability to sell/buy all over the world, availability of products at any time without time restrictions, cost reductions largely due to the absence of the need for physical establishments, or even learning about the buying habits of target customers thanks to big data tools in order to increase revenues and strengthen the relationships with consumers.
In 2016, Mercadona decided to relaunch its online shopping business. To accomplish so, it began developing and implementing the Hives model, which consists of warehouses that are solely dedicated to online orders with the goal of optimizing and speeding up both their preparation and delivery, resulting in an increased productivity and time savings. This well-known grocery company has recently announced that it would expand its e-commerce logistics with the opening of two additional logistics centers in Spain, one situated in the city of Seville and the other one in Alicante.
The firm currently operates three distribution centers in Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid, the last of which was established in April 2020 and where online sales were temporarily halted owing to overcrowding during the confinement. According to its 2021 annual report, Mercadona Online has managed to consolidate itself, increasing its sales to 257 million euros during this year. This figure represents a 45 percent increase over the previous year. In addition, the company has increased its number of orders to 1,8 million, up from 1,2 million in 2020.
With the aim of improving its logistics chain and in order to bring the company closer to low density areas, the company has begun to develop two new solutions. The first one named as New Teleshopping, which is currently being tested in Castellón and Tarragona. ‘Customers near these supermarkets place their orders on the revamped website or the mobile application and they are prepared and sent from the stores using the same processes and technologies as in the Hives, which reduces preparation time, makes better use of physical resources and reduces strain on employees’ states the company. An the second one known as Honeycomb, being tested in a store in Gandía (Valencia) which pretends to cooperate with the Hives. ‘Orders are prepared in the Valencia Hive and taken by trailer to this store in the region of La Safor so that the Mercadona Online delivery staff can pick them up and deliver them to the bosses’ as they called their customers.
What steps will Mercadona follow next? Will e-commerce continue to be an important pillar for the expansion of the company?
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 