Serving unmet needs of premium grocery shopping for Thais

Lotus’s introduced three driving engines to win the hearts of premium grocery shoppers.

Having an established presence for over 29 years in Thailand, Lotus’s continues to play in the hypermarket & convenience supermarket business by expanding its new segments extremely. It has recently taken in an effort to modernise its brand image with the purpose of making everyone have a smart and delightful shopping trip.

The supermarket brand explored its potential in capturing the premium grocery shopping segment, due to the huge opportunity that the premium supermarket segmentation presents in Thailand.

Based on its findings, the majority of premium grocery shoppers are hybrid shoppers who shop at a premium supermarket for some specific premium item list and some other item or necessity items with mainstream retailers.

With this came Lotus’s Privé – a premium inclusive concept aimed to deliver a new premium grocery shopping experience to everyone. The concept store had three key driving engines to win the hearts of premium grocery shoppers.

Amongst this is its offering of a new brand identity to deliver the perfect sensorial experience that is different from competitors in the market. The concept store also reimagined its location strategy, as Lotus’s Privé will focus on locations in prime residential areas where premium grocery demands are not yet fulfilled.

At the same time, it also redefined premium grocery shopping norms to offer a premium range of products and other everyday necessities items at reasonable prices. The supermarket chain now offers local and international dry grocery food and non-food around the world over 27,000 stock-keeping units.

This brand initiative has been picked up by professional news organisations and influencers, having published over 200 pieces of content organically. This led to a customer satisfaction rate of 91%, compared to the other premium groceries’ benchmark of 87%. The average daily sale also hit over 1.8x, more than the previous average sales recorded.

This successful feat has been recognised by Retail Asia Awards, as Lotus’s took home the Supermarket of the Year - Thailand category win.

“We are confident that Lotus’s Privé will make all Thais have a smart and delightful [experience] in every shopping trip and enjoy our offer as premium grocery stores in the coming future,” the company said.

Launching digital Lotus’s NFT platform 

As part of its brand reimaging, Lotus’s has revamped its new brand identity to portray a friendly, vibrant, and approachable mood and tone. The new identity allows the brand to capture and penetrate younger consumers.

The supermarket chain also launched in 2022 the “Lotus’s SMART Application,” a one-stop service application that combines revamped loyalty programme and online service, delivering a more personalised experience backed up by artificial intelligence and accelerating the store’s modern image.

Alongside the launch of this one-stop service, Lotus’s Non-Fungible Token (NFT) platform was also introduced, with the ultimate goal to build brand association toward the young generation.

Consumers who downloaded the application and registered for My Lotus’s membership stood a chance to collect “My Lotus’s NFT” as a digital premium giveaway for free during the campaign. Lotus’s has continued the NFT platform to drive traffic to Lotus’s and build a community to associate consumers.

To ensure that the NFTs were valuable in the crypto marketplace and in the future, the company collaborated with top Thai NFT artists in limited collections as a magnet for redemption, collection, and exchange in the future.

It has also continuously expanded its NFT platform by utilising core ideas of NFT premium giveaways and flex to occasions and seasonal to write along trends. This approach has created talk and relevance amongst young consumers.

The NFT platform has acquired 80% of non-Lotus’s young generation consumers in an age range of 18-24 and 25-31. Moreover, the platform drove traffic to Lotus’s Smart Application by more than 225% during the campaign activities.

Lotus’s has also received recognition as the first retailer to tap into metaverse marketing.

This feat has also been recognised by the prestigious awards programme as Lotus’s brought home the Digital Initiative of the Year - Thailand category win. Retail Asia Awards gathers the region's best retailers and recognises major breakthroughs, innovations, and key players in the Asia retail industry.