How The Fresh Market achieved 18.7x engagement rates with shoppable livestreaming

The Fresh Market is a specialty food retailer for those looking to discover the best in restaurant-quality meals, hand-picked organic produce, premium baked goods, fresh-cut flowers, custom-cut meats, and carefully curated offerings for holidays and special occasions. The Fresh Market offers an intimate and personalized shopping experience for guests. In addition to an exceptional in-store experience, The Fresh Market curates digital properties that include an ecommerce website and a shoppable digital magazine.

The challenge: New avenues for digital engagement

As grocery retail evolves to include the melding of both in-store and digital experiences, The Fresh Market recognized that guests needed more. But where to start? The Fresh Market wanted to bring an immersive in-store experience to its online guests, who were beginning to demand more from traditional ecommerce websites. The goal was to have guests see The Fresh Market’s digital properties as an extension of their neighborhood store.

To get over the finish line, The Fresh Market needed a partner experienced in using breakthrough technologies, like livestream video, to enhance a guest’s journey while transforming the way they engage with their favorite brands. The answer was to offer an in-store experience, such as attending a live cooking demonstration, to its guests through shoppable videos and livestreaming. This way, guests could attend an event, interact through live chat, and purchase featured items and ingredients—all from the comfort of their easy chair.

The solution: Shoppable livestream video

The Fresh Market selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Firework for its video commerce solution. Using Firework’s patented technology platform, designed to increase engagement, brand loyalty, basket size, and conversion, The Fresh Market saw immediate results.

The Fresh Market took two approaches, depending on how guests were shopping. The first approach was to use short-form shoppable videos embedded on its ecommerce website. The second approach was to engage in full livestream events that could be shoppable.

Engagement takes flight with short-form video

Short-form shoppable videos embedded on The Fresh Market’s website saw engagement skyrocket. Conversion rates doubled and session time increased by 115 percent. Viewers were able to engage directly with products and learn about related items.

Short-form shoppable videos

Using Firework’s platform allowed The Fresh Market to curate and offer engaging content to guests. In addition, the Firework platform allows retailers like The Fresh Market to sell video advertising in the form of “digital shelf space” to brands they carry.

Holiday livestreams captivate and convert

For the second approach, The Fresh Market went a step further to increase guest engagement. It used the Firework platform to create shoppable livestreams that centered around key moments like holidays.

Thanksgiving Livestream Event with Celebrity Chef, Anna Rossi

These events featured a livestream video with a chat window on the left-hand side of the screen, and a “shop” option on the right-hand side. The “shop” window listed the ingredients and products highlighted in the livestream. While watching the Thanksgiving Livestream Event, viewers were able to ask questions or post comments in the live chat, and use the “shop” option to click on featured items to add them to their shopping cart.

The Results: Skyrocketing views and conversions

The results were amazing. The Fresh Market’s Thanksgiving Livestream Event hosted by celebrity chef Anna Rossi attracted over 700,000 views, and the event drove 6.7x higher clickthrough rates compared to industry averages.

Omnichannel approach drives lasting impact

Overall, the first four livestream events exceeded two million views. The Fresh Market then employed multi-channel marketing by reaching customers through channels like social media and email with dynamic shoppable video content.

The Fresh Market and Firework are an award-winning combination

According to Kevin Miller, Chief Marketing Officer at The Fresh Market, “Bringing inspiration and action together has proven a winning formula and has created a better shopping experience for our guests, wherever they are.”

By seamlessly blending entertainment and commerce, The Fresh Market succeeded in delivering the engaging specialty shopping experience its guests expect. In fact, Firework and The Fresh Market won Digiday Video and TV Awards’ Best Live Video Strategy for their Thanksgiving Video Commerce Campaign.

Through next-level video and livestreaming powered by Firework, The Fresh Market continues pioneering new ways to interact with food lovers and nourish their passion for specialty foods.

The technology: Powering personalized commerce

Built on AWS, Firework was first implemented as a shoppable video platform in 2020. It has quickly gained adoption from a wide range of brands in more than 37 countries, with customers gaining up to 20x increased return on investment (ROI) for livestreams, as much as 282 percent increased time onsite, and up to a 307 percent conversion increase. Capable of supporting up to nine million transactions per second, the platform makes the most of AWS resource availability, incorporating livestreaming, short video hosting, near-real-time inventory tracking, interactive chat and polling, transactional features, and more into an easily navigated browser-based interface.

“Shoppertainment”

Through “shoppertainment,” a term coined by Lazada, a Southeast Asian ecommerce company, consumers are entertained while they shop, thereby enhancing the shopping experience. Videos that are engaging are fun to watch and educational at the same time. For example, watching a short video on how to bake Chilean sea bass helps consumers who tend to shy away from making seafood at home. They can learn how it’s done and where to get the best ingredients.

And, what’s good for the consumer is good for the retailer. According to Statista, live shopping sales in the United States alone are estimated at $17 billion for 2022 and are forecasted to hit $55 billion by 2026; that’s only a small fraction of what’s already underway in Asia. Based on a McKinsey report from 2021, livestream shopping in China has grown from $3 billion to $171 billion. Between 2017 and 2020, the value of China’s live-commerce market grew at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 280 percent.

Firework leverages Amazon Interactive Video Service

As an AWS Partner, Firework is helping brands and creators capitalize on this trend with its dynamic platform that allows live and on-demand video to be natively integrated in websites and applications quickly and easily. Because high quality and low latency are paramount, Firework delivers live content by leveraging Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS), a managed livestreaming solution designed to provide fast and straightforward setup for interactive video experiences. When looking for solutions to build its platform, Firework chose Amazon IVS for its low latency, global scalability, and the mobile broadcast software development kit (SDK).

Firework on AWS: Scalable and reliable

Firework brings live commerce to brands’ digital storefronts through livestream and shoppable video. Firework’s video-commerce solution offers brands, retailers, and publishers easy to deploy livestream shopping technology that facilitates interaction and community engagement seamlessly and at scale.

Through shoppable and livestream video and powerful monetization capabilities, Firework empowers the world’s most dynamic and exciting retailers, brands, and publishers to deliver engaging video experiences on their owned and operated digital properties and across the web. Firework helps organizations bring new levels of authenticity and connection to their digital storefronts, speak to digital natives in the format they prefer, and take control of their customer data.

Find Firework Shoppable Livestream in AWS Marketplace »

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The Fresh Market: Pioneering specialty retail innovation

Recognized by USA Today as the “Best Grocery Store in America” for 2023, The Fresh Market helps guests discover the best with time-saving meal solutions, unique ingredients, and delicious food for any occasion. From fresh produce and exceptional meat and seafood to signature baked goods and thousands of organic options, the specialty grocer has something to please every palate. Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, The Fresh Market currently operates 161 stores in 22 states across the US, inspiring guests to discover new flavors and cook with confidence.

Conclusion

The notion of “shoppertainment” is catching on in the retail industry. Incorporating avenues that capture a consumer’s attention with retail media networks is a powerful combination. What The Fresh Market brilliantly hit upon was the notion that its guests would respond to the extension of a cooking show that’s interactive and lets them add items they need to their cart, complete their order, and have it delivered. Through the use of Firework’s platform, the realization of clickthrough rates of nearly 7x industry averages, and conversion rates 650 percent higher than its site average, The Fresh Market and its guests are both winners.