The Samsung Family Hub

Supriya Chaudhury, Chief Marketing Officer for Clavis Insight, provides some perspective on the latest Samsung Family Hub launch

Yes, its all about the “internet of things” again – but Samsung’s Family Hub concept might well be a bigger threat to Amazon than anyone could imagine.  It works much like Amazon’s Dash and allows shoppers to reorder their foods with just a touch of a button. But some analysts see more problems than benefits.

Supriya Chaudhury, Chief Marketing Officer, Clavis Insight The Samsung Hub that just launched, it’s their third launch in terms of a technology enabled refrigerator for the kitchen.  Their first two launches weren’t that successful.  And this particular refrigerator has got a particularly pricey price point, it’s $5,000 a pop.  So, in our opinion, it’s not going to have a huge dramatic impact on grocery retail right away.  What it signals much more importantly is the level of comfort that we as individuals are growing into to accept these technology enabled devices in our homes and in our kitchens.  These types of technology enabled, internet-of-things developments are definitely going to be things that supermarkets need to watch and they need to really be asking themselves “How do we become part of this?” and “How should we be leveraging this?”.  

Samsung technology and the technology that’s on the fridge, right now in the New York market, there are only two retailers that are really connected to that device.  And one thing that supermarkets should be thinking about is how they can get themselves on to being connected to these devices when they launch.

The consumer now is not going to the store.  Getting out of the car or walking to the store, picking up a product from the shelf and then having to transport it home.  So that offers up all kinds of opportunities for larger pack sizes that are getting delivered to the house.  And different nature of packaging that can now be implemented by Brand manufacturers.  

Samsung and the technology enabled refrigerator is a sort of beacon of change that’s going to come.  I think the refrigerator itself or each individual piece of technology that is occurring, may not at this point be the tipping point to driving a huge change, but all of these technologies that are getting adopted that consumers are more comfortable with are pushing to a tipping point and really pointing to the fact that online groceries, online shopping is very much here to stay.  And that consumers are more and more open to new ways of delivery and interacting the product.  

Phil There is no doubt that grocery disruption is here as consumers want convenience, speed of delivery and simplicity.