Polish retailer and marketplace Allegro invests around €230 million (PLN 1 billion) in its ecosystem, reports Internet Retailing. The investment particularly focuses on logistics and IT, as it seeks to support its rapidly growing seller base.
Customer perks
Allegro will mainly focus on developing its Allegro Smart! offer. This program offers customers free delivery for a monthly fee. The free delivery can take place at home or in over 20.000 pick-up points in Poland. According to the retailer, customers saved over €100 million in delivery costs using the programma in 2019.
A share of the investment will be to expand the network of pick-up points. Aside from that, Allegro focuses on offering customers the possibility to track purchases at every delivery stage. It also aims for an automated return process for purchased goods.
Seller benefits
The Polish marketplace and retailer will focus on new features for sellers as well. One of these will be the introduction of new tools. These tools are meant to make it easier to analyse, manage and optimise deliveries.
Technological developments
A part of the Allegro investment will be in the development of machine and deep learning mechanisms. It aims to hire 250 new engineers to its IT-team. The focus for the tech-team will be to understand customer shopping-intentions based on search terms and medium. With this, the Polish retailer hopes to be able to provide customers with more personalised recommendations, suggestions and search results.
Another tech-project focuses on adding a new customer service tool. This tool allows customers to interact via live chat. All messages will be saved on a single platform. It should enable customers to track all purchase-related information through the same platform. Therefore, Allegro introduced Allegro Gadane, a social platform allowing customers and sellers to communicate with the retailer. President Francois Nuyts of Allegro comments: “In 2020, we will continue to focus on investments that improve the customer’s shopping experience and provide Allegro sellers with excellent conditions for developing their business.”
Allegro hopes the new plans will support 200 million additional offers and 20% more sellers by the end of 2020.