The summer of 2010 is emerging as a time of major moves in the UK’s online grocery sector.

In early July, Amazon UK surprised many observers by entering this market, offering 22,000 popular grocery items and household goods. Delivery options include those already familiar to Amazon customers, such as express, super saver and evening rates. Amazon Prime, which provides unlimited free one-day delivery for an annual fee of £49 ($77), can also be used for the grocery service.

Amazon’s move is a clear signal that the internet grocery business is ripe for growth. Another sign is the proliferation of mobile apps and website improvements from leading players. In fact, mobile platforms look set to be a crucial battleground for grocery retailers, as smartphone use continues to rise in the UK.

At the end of July, Waitrose unveiled a new iPhone app and mobile site. The app is free, and can be downloaded to the iPod Touch and iPad as well as the iPhone. The mobile website will showcase in-store offers, and recipes from two celebrity chefs, Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal, who are already associated with the Waitrose brand. Both app and website incorporate location-based technology enabling users to find convenient stores.

Not to be outdone, the retail giant Tesco—which saw £136 million ($217 million) in profit from online sales last year—announced on August 4 that its first fully transactional mobile app would launch on Nokia’s Ovi Store within a week. Registered members of Tesco.com will be able to browse a full list of goods available in store, and update their shopping lists.

As of May 2010, groceries had barely registered on the radar of most mobile phone users in the UK. A YouGov poll for Brandbank found that just 17% of smartphone users said they were likely to buy groceries via their handsets—compared to 26% who said they were likely to purchase clothing or accessories, and 53% who said they were likely to buy CDs, computer games or other physical entertainment products.

But grocery buying via mobile has enormous potential in the UK. The country’s leading grocers hope to boost take-up of their new services with highly visible promotion and word-of-mouth, and clearly expect significant growth in the number of mobile buyers during the next year. As Nic Howell of nma magazine commented on August 5: “When mobile becomes a story about the weekly shop, rather than trendy people becoming mayors of their favorite Soho bars, then it gets interesting.” In turn, mobile purchase of groceries should reinforce ecommerce as a growing habit among UK consumers.

For a current overview of online shopping and buying in the UK, see the eMarketer report “UK B2C Ecommerce: Consolidating the Gains.”

Count Sephora as the latest retailer to offer consumers a complete mobile web experience in advance of the October launch of its iPhone app. The beauty retailer unveiled its mobile shopping effort this week, positioning it as a “Beauty to Go” shopping tool just in time for the back-to-school/fall fashion frenzy.

When I interviewed Julie Bornstein, senior vice president at Sephora Direct, in May, she hinted that the brand was in the throes of planning a major mobile web initiative, saying, “Mobile presents huge opportunities from a retail perspective in-store.”

InsightExpress noted that 14% of US mobile users used their mobile phone in a store to take a picture of an item to send to a friend, while 5% made a purchase using their mobile phone.

The mobile site offers complete access to Beauty Insiders, Sephora’s loyalty program; the ability to purchase items directly from the handset; ratings and reviews; access to past purchase history; shopping lists; news on new products as they hit the shelves; links to Facebook; a GPS store locator; and news on store events.

When Sephora’s iPhone app launches in October, the retailer will debut holiday-oriented gift-giving promotions–one each day, according to Bornstein. “We’ll feature one great product we’re obsessed with under the banner Great Gift Ideas each day,” she said. Also coming: short videos from brand founders about why their brand/product makes a good gift. Using the app’s barcode scanner, shoppers using it in-store “will be able to do a bunch of things around the product—reviews, play the video, add the product to a shopping list,” she said.

Bornstein says she believes the app and the mobile website will appeal to a broad range of beauty shoppers—anywhere from age 20 to 60. The chain plans in-store, catalog and online promotion for the mobile site and app, as well as email to its Beauty Insider database.

Beauty junkies: Start your mobile engines, or at least rev your fingers.

In a new series of Webisodes, Kimberly-Clark takes a humorous approach to an unsexy condition that it says affects one in three women over the age of 18: light bladder leakage. The multimedia ad campaign for the company’s Poise brand marks the debut of a new 1in3likeme Website and Webisodes featuring Whoopi Goldberg, who takes on the personas of eight characters talking about the condition. The Website invites women to sign up for a free product sample. A blog, articles, message boards, chat events, as well as videos featuring women talking about light bladder leakage, appear on the Poise brand site.

eMarketer’s Tobi Elkin recently spoke with Anne Jones, who launched the 1in3likeme campaign for Kimberly-Clark in February 2010. Here’s a snippet from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access. (Read more…)

One hundred and thirty years ago, Campbell’s invented condensed soup and began selling it to stores. Ten years ago, it launched its brand online via a co-branded partnership with Netgrocer.com. The company has created so many soups that stores have simply run out of room. Most retailers stock Campbell’s top sellers along with popular regional flavors.

While this adds up to a lot of soup, it leaves a few customers without their favorite flavors. We recently spoke with John Faulkner, director of brand communications, Jodi O’Brien, manager of consumer operations, and John Johnson, senior manager of interactive marketing, who discussed the strategy behind this small but important part of Campbell’s business. Here’s a snippet from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access: (Read more…)

Apple’s TV ads for iPhone apps declare: “We have an app for that”. Seems like Apple has an app in its App Store for just about everything–stain removal tips, color sampling, meal planning, coffee runs and a slew of time-wasting novelties.

The growth in mobile apps is being fueled, in part, by consumer marketers that are throwing their hats into the app development ring. My new report, “Mobile Apps and Consumer Products Brands”, which is available on eMarketer Total Access, cautions marketers to think about where in the mobile, digital marketing and media plan an app fits before they get too excited.

“The question isn’t ‘Why would P&G or Kraft or Clorox want an app?’” John Hadl, founder and CEO of BrandinHand, told eMarketer. “You start with the premise of ‘I don’t know if I want an app. I know that I want to help and touch and improve consumers’ lives and make products to do that.’ You start there, then ask whether mobile can play a role. And of all the things one can do in mobile, is a mobile app the best way of doing it?”

Your customers are a good place to start. Then, after analyzing how your brand’s customers might be helped by an app, marketers should come up with a strategy where the app fills a unique and compelling need. It should make a consumer’s life easier and more fun, or offer a useful benefit—or it might successfully combine both of these objectives.

We’ve published several interviews and case studies on consumer brands and mobile apps in the past few weeks. Here’s a rundown:

• Jeremy Lockhorn, Razorfish: Why Consumer Brands Should Be Thinking About Mobile Apps.
• Jami Lawrence, Publicis Modem: Mobile Marketing & App Strategies for Food Brands.
• Chris Epple, PepsiCo: Propelling the Pepsi Spirit with Mobile Apps.
• Ed Kaczmarek, Kraft: Kraft’s Mobile Branding Recipe.
• Amanda Mahan, Clorox: Clorox App Gives Consumers Content They Want.

A lot of brands are struggling to figure out what they want out of apps. Sure, they want to collect more consumer data, insights into shopping habits and preferences, behaviors at home and elsewhere and links to their loyalty programs. But like any other digital or non-digital marketing program, they are looking for benchmarks and metrics by which they can evaluate an app’s “effectiveness” and engagement. It’s not enough for someone just to download an app, play around with it once and never use it again. There has to be some pattern of repeat usage and links to social media.

Here’s something noteworthy on that score: iPhone users downloaded the most apps in Q4 2009 with an average of 37 per user, according to The Nielsen Company’s App Playbook. No surprise there. But Android users had an average of 22 app downloads per user, showing that the Google platform is running hard and fast. The Playbook found that users of other mobile devices downloaded an average of 16 apps, Palm had 14, Microsoft Windows Mobile scored 13 and Blackberry came in last with 10.

But don’t you want to know how many times each of those users actually engaged with, i.e., used the app? I do.