The Digital and Competitive Business Strategies Pursued by Sainsbury’s E-commerce Platform along with Proposals for Additional Improvement

Based on the appointed cookies on Sainsbury’s online shopping platform and the descriptions provided along with the cookies, it seems that Sainsbury's is operating several competitive and digital business techniques. Some major aspects of Sainsbury’s online shopping platform concerning its competitive and digital business techniques are analysed and discussed below.

Competitive Strategy:

User Authentication: Sainsbury’s e-commerce platform’s usage of cookies such as WC_AUTHENTICATION_-1002 and WC_USERACTIVITY_-1002 indicates a priority on user identification and customer relationship management. These cookies function as a user authentication tool and confirm that no unknown users can access the user's account.

E-commerce Optimization: Sainsbury’s platform’s cookies like postcode, slot_booking, and SESSION_COOKIEACCEPT exhibit a priority on optimization of the e-commerce platform and shopper journey tracking. Through these cookies, Sainsbury’s can easily provide shoppers with delivery options, show nearby stores, and schedule and plan delivery or pickup of orders from stores. This indicates that Sainsbury’s has a strategy of maximising its conversion rates and sales through compelling website functionality and design.

Digital Business Strategies:

Personalisation and Optimization of User Experience: Sainsbury’s e-commerce platform has employed cookies such as espot_click, peerius_sess, and peerius_rid. These cookies help the e-commerce platform to stalk user behaviour and help to deliver personalised content according to the shopper's behaviour. This indicates that Sainsbury’s e-commerce platform focuses on improving user or shopper experience through targeted content and personalised recommendations.

Data-driven Approach for Decision Making: Sainsbury’s website has cookies in place like _gid, DEVICEINFO and _ga and these cookies suggest that Sainsbury is accumulating data for conducting analytics and generating insights analysing the collected datasets. This further indicates that Sainsbury’s e-commerce platform possesses a data-driven strategy for marketing strategy and decision-making. Through the cookie named “DEVICEINFO”, Sainsbury’s e-commerce platform analyses and aggregates YouTube data with the shopper's profile data. This helps Sainsbury’s to deliver targeted advertising to its shopping platform visitors.    

Recommendations for Improving Competitive and Digital Business Strategies:

Optimisation of the Supply Chain: Sainsbury’s should implement technologies such as AI and predictive analytics to optimise its supply chain. Utilising these tools within the supply chain helps organisations to improve their inventory, and maintain the availability of products (Helo and Hao, 2022). Further, Sainsbury’s can also utilise these tools to forecast the demand for distinct products accurately and minimise stockout scenarios.

Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Sainsbury’s should embrace initiatives concerning sustainability and transmit them transparently to its shopper base. Such as the company should sustain ethical sourcing procedures and lower packaging waste to draw environmentally conscious shoppers.