Background
The grocery sector is extremely competitive and based more on volume than other industries, as the margins on single unit SKU sales are often so small as to be individually insignificant. Store types range from "Ma and Pa" shops to 100,000 square foot hypermarkets. Along with retailers, the industry also includes grocery suppliers, warehousers, wholesalers, jobbers, farmer's markets, specialty retailers like butchers and organic purveyors and even
roadside fruit and vegetable stands. The variation of business types in the grocery sector has an equalizing effect on statistics about the industry's application and results from email and
social media marketing.
Wholesalers and jobbers underutilize email marketing, while other sectors of the grocery industry - like organic and natural food sellers - tend to use online forms of promotion. Organic and natural food retailers also tend to dominate social networking more than any other sector in the industry. However, even their high levels of participation cannot offset the lack of social media engagement across all sections of the grocery industry, causing the median to fall below average when compared against all industries.
