P&G in Yahoo! tie-up to promote grocery sector

Procter & Gamble (P&G) has teamed up with Yahoo! UK & Ireland to create a special microsite guide to UK supermarket shopping on the Net.

The microsite – The ABC of Online Shopping – was developed for the packaged goods giant by Joshua Interactive and will be online for three months from March 7. It will be promoted with a range of rich-media executions running across different areas of the Yahoo! site.

P&G and Yahoo! say they are responding to recent consumer concerns about online grocery shopping, sparked in part by a Which? report that highlighted a number of complaints about poor service from some of the leading supermarkets’ online shopping sites. The microsite is intended to reassure consumers and help to build the online grocery shopping sector – it lags behind other retail sectors.

Mauricio Davila, P&G brand manager for e-retail, Western Europe, says the microsite “is a unique way to build the P&G brand portfolio beyond the traditional media of advertising, promotions or sponsorship”.

The site will provide information about online grocery shopping, clearly setting out the differences between the leading supermarkets’ online offerings. It will also carry independent reviews of the four leading online grocery operators – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado and Asda – and the full text of the Which? report, which consumers will be able to download free of charge.

In the Which? report, Ocado, Waitrose’s online partner, was voted best online grocer with 78 per cent of readers saying its service was very good, compared to 46 per cent for Tesco and 30 per cent for Sainsbury’s to You.