Who are the customers of e-tailing in the developed world?
The customers have to be really targeted. If you are not really targeted, especially when it comes to grocery, you can never make money. The reason is that customer-acquisition costs tend to be somewhere between $200 and $700 because of brand advertising, incentives given, etc. So, if the cost of acquiring a customer is $200-700, you have to have a customer who remains with you long enough for you to be able to ‘recover’ that initial $200-700. Is it worth spending that much money on a customer? It is only worth for the right customer. The right customer for grocery e-tailing is a customer who orders 40 times a year on an average of $100 a year. The only people who seem to get to that level are households where, both, the husband and the wife work 100 per cent. If the wife works 70 per cent, the first thing she does after work is grocery shopping. We find that the attitude of women who work 70 per cent towards grocery shopping through the Internet is identical to the attitude of those w
