In addition to being able to place orders, users will also be able to search weekly circulars, clip coupons and search for recipes. Campbell Soup Co. is the exclusive mobile advertising launch partner for the first three months.

“We manage digital solutions for 130+ grocery retailers and mobile visits to our retailers Web sites have been doubling every year since 2009,” said Rebecca Roose, senior product marketing manager at MyWebGrocer, Winooski, VT.

“This translates to 10 percent to 25 percent of visits to grocery retailers’ sites are from a mobile device,” she said. “When you trend this out over the next few years the majority of retailer digital interaction will be through mobile.

“If retailers don’t have a mobile experience for those mobile shoppers the conversion rate is poor. Retailers need to be where their shoppers are, which is online and on their smart phones.”

ShopRite was not able to provide a comment by the deadline.

Building a grocery list
The ShopRite mobile commerce app has been customized to highlight its offerings.

Consumers typically would rather be doing something else than grocery shopping. So, when retailers can offer a time-saving and convenience service to shoppers via a mobile commerce app, this can help them retain and acquire customers.

ShopRite began using the app in January. The app is available for free download on iPhones and Android phones and will be available for the iPad as well.

Campbell’s will be advertising four of its new innovative products on the app, including Campbell’s Kitchen, Skillet Sauces, Go Soups and v8 Fusion.

App users can scan bar codes at home to build a grocery list.

The app can by synchronized to a user’s particular retail store with updated in stock information specific to that store location.

Portable shopping cart
Users can also start adding things to a shopping cart from a desktop computer and finish up on a mobile device, with the cart following the cart from computer to phone.

Other features include the ability to create and edit a shopping list, clip digital coupons, browse recipes and add recipe ingredients to a shopping list as well as store locator maps.

Additionally, the app enables users to research nutritional information on many products, filter products by brand or price, in addition to predictive search capabilities and look at past purchases to duplicate previous orders.

Supermarkets have been slow to embrace mobile, but that started changing last year with MyWebGrocer, which manages digital solutions for more than 130 retailers nationally.

MyWebGrocer reports that the number of grocery retailers with a mobile presence increased 110 percent in the first half of 2012, albeit off a small base.

Mobile commerce has been an even tougher nut for grocery chains to crack.

“With mobile commerce, shoppers can order and add items to their cart as they think about it and retailers are not missing out on those sales,” Ms. Roose said. “The results are bigger basket sizes, loyal and new shoppers to your store.

“In just the first eight weeks since launch we have seen a significant increase in orders touched by mobile week over week,” she said. “And we were surprised to see the increase of  new online  grocery shoppers – those who have never placed an online order before – have been acquired since the mobile commerce launch.”

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York