Swiss retailer Migros has called a halt to the rollout of Amigos, a social shopping platform that enabled customers to do shopping on behalf of their friends and neighbours.
The service will be concluded on 10 December, the retailer said, after a test phase revealed that shoppers would be better serviced though a reconfigured commercial shopping platform.
Test Phase
The retailer launched Amigos in April 2018, in two test cities, Bern and Zurich. It developed a website, amigos.ch, on to which customers could place their shopping lists, which would then be picked up by others who were visiting a Migros store.
'At the foreground of this "peer to peer" concept was the social idea of neighbourly assistance,' Migros said in a statement, noting that Amigos was the first 'social shopping' app of its kind in Switzerland.
The first test phase concluded in April of this year, at which stage Migros said that it was focusing on 'individual areas' of the service that it wanted to develop further.
However, following the second test phase, the retailer has decided to conclude the project, stating that it has gathered valuable feedback from the experience.
'Not In Vain'
"Although Amigos is not being introduced after the test phase, the project was not in vain for us," said Matthias Wunderlin, marketing department head at the Federation of Migros Cooperatives. "We have gained experience that is very valuable to us in terms of future projects."
The retailer thanked all its customers for using Amigos during the test phase, adding that it will continue to test 'innovative projects' such as this in the future to better tailor shopping options to its customers.
Launching Amigos in April 2018, the managing director for Migros Neuchâtel-Fribourg, Fabrice Zumbrunnen, said, "With this service, we combine today's shopping needs of a digital society with the personal contact between two people."
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
