Online Grocery Shopping: The New Norm

Online grocery shopping is becoming the focus of investments not only for big retail organizations such as Kroger, Target and Walmart, but also for small businesses. Amazon is one of the most popular websites, which people use not only for selling and buying clothes, but also for food. Amazon offers a huge variety of groceries to its customers.

Vladimir Kim, a businessman, expanded his business after he started selling frozen food on Amazon.

“I have a seafood business, but I was selling for restaurants only,” Vladimir said. “Not a long time ago, I noticed that people use Amazon for grocery shopping, and I decided to expand my business through the internet.”

Selling fresh and frozen food on Amazon is probably one of the most complicated online businesses because of various requirement approvals. The standards have to be met, or Amazon will decline the seller.

“After doing some quick research, I subscribed for a Professional Selling Plan,” Vladimir said. “After an account was created, I, as the Pro Merchant, had to meet the standards for my products and list its quality specifically to get an approval to sell in the Grocery & Gourmet Food.”

Sellers also need to think about how and where to keep the products, how to transport them and how to keep it fresh all at the same time. It is important to make sure that customers will get fresh groceries and stay satisfied.

“I had to think how to transport it to customers and make sure that it will stay in a certain temperature all the time,” Vladimir said. “Insulated cooler boxes are used by many sellers, and this is what I decided to use for my products.”

A professional seller on Amazon needs to think about customers. Shipping, delivery, time and price influence their decision either to buy a product or leave it. Shipping is pricy, but frozen food spoils easily that is why it needs to be delivered as fast as possible.

“Another problem with which I faced was the delivery time,” Vladimir said. “Shipping can be expensive and this influences the total price of the product. I had to focus on selling in the Georgia area and close by states because shipping is cheaper, which made my products affordable for everyone.”

Customers need to be satisfied with the products and delivery because they leave a rating on the page of the professional seller. Amazon’s directory controls the seller’s rating level. If a negative rating appears on the screen it means that a seller will receive penalties from Amazon. The transparent rating system helps customers to stay satisfied and gives a choice from whom to buy products.

“I had been doing this business for almost a year and I can say that my customers get only the best quality products and fast delivery,” Vladimir said.

Vladimir says that it was definitely the right decision to expand the business online. It took time to get customers attention and overgrow the competitors, but the income is worth all the headache.

“I do not like to brag about how much I earn on Amazon, but I can say that it is enough,” Vladimir said.

The competition in online selling is enormous. It is hard to compete with big organizations, and sellers who have been working there for years, but Vladimir decided to take the risk and succeeded.