Ninja Mart App

How to build a direct & loyal relationship with traditional grocery store owners with Ninja Mart App

 

 

The Context & The Challenge

Ninja Mart exists to serve a traditionally underserved market: independent grocery stores across Vietnam & Malaysia, especially in rural areas. Our core business model provides them with agile logistics and transparent pricing in a fragmented supply chain.

However, our entire relationship with these store owners was channeled through a field sales team. This created significant business risks:

• No Direct Channel: We had no way to communicate directly with our end customers.
• Relationship Risk: Customer loyalty was often tied to the individual salesperson, not to the Ninja Mart brand.
• Lack of Data: We couldn’t collect direct feedback or data on customer behavior.

My challenge was to forge a direct, loyal relationship between Ninja Mart and our customers. This led to the inception of the Ninja Mart app, a strategic initiative to build this direct bridge and embrace the growing trend of digitalization among traditional retailers.

This raised the crucial initial questions:

• How might we build a direct and loyal relationship with our merchants?
• What initial features and Go-To-Market strategy would truly resonate with our unique user base?

The approach: Diving deep into User Research

To answer these questions, we ran an initial user research initiative to understand the core motivations and behaviors of our customers. We conducted: 11 in-depth, in-person interviews with current grocery store owners in Cần Thơ, testing concepts around loyalty, rewards, and app usage.

The research yielded several critical insights that became the foundation for our product strategy

Insight 1: Direct Savings is King

Merchants are extremely price-sensitive and meticulously calculate the final price-per-unit for their orders. They overwhelmingly prefer tangible financial benefits like cashback or direct discounts over abstract rewards like points or gifts.

Insight 2: Points & Tiers are Ineffective

The concept of a points-based loyalty program with different tiers was met with indifference.
Merchants stated they would not check an app frequently just to see points, as the accumulation process is too slow to be engaging.

Insight 3: An App Needs Utility, Not Just Loyalty

A simple loyalty program alone is not enough to drive app adoption. The real value for them in an app is a true e-commerce experience: the ability to check prices, see promotions, track orders, and manage their business more effectively

Insight 4: The Power of Credit

An unexpected but powerful insight was the role of financing. Merchants showed immense loyalty to suppliers who offered longer credit terms, sometimes valuing it even more than the lowest price. This pointed to a significant future opportunity.

The Solution: An MVP Focused on Value

Based on the crucial insight that “Direct Savings is King,” we decided the first version of the Ninja Mart app would be a straightforward cashback app. This approach directly addressed the primary motivation of our users while providing a simple, tangible reason to use the app.

The Results & Early Learnings

Our Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy was designed to leverage Ninja Van’s greatest asset: our 160-strong field sales team. We empowered them to act as our primary acquisition channel, directly introducing the app to store owners during their daily visits.

To drive initial adoption, we ran the app pilot in only one province (in nearly 2 months) to test the MVP with our existing customer base in this area and launched an aggressive incentive program in parallel: new users received a 50,000đ voucher upon installing the app and placing their first order on the spot, facilitated by the salesperson.

While this approach was effective at driving installs, the early data revealed a critical challenge that demanded immediate attention.

• The Win: We saw impressive early adoption, reaching 53% of the target customer base in that particular province (an average of 283 Monthly Active Users) within the first 3 months.
• The Challenge: A lower-than-expected monthly retention rate of ~18%.

This data told a clear story:

• While we did have new users, but the new app users might come because of the incentive we gave them
• However, the retetion rate 18% indicates that: features we offer on the app is not appealing enough for them to come back after the initial “inorganic usage”

The team made a decision to pause new acquisition efforts and focus 100% on solving the retention problem, because the 18% of MoM retention rate is too low to keep launching the app to the next province.

Rapid Discovery: Uncovering the “Why”

To understand the root causes of low retention, we formulated 2 primary hypotheses after so many round of discussion:

• Hypothesis #1
  The app’s cashback mechanics are unclear, after the initial 50,000đ incentive is redeemed, users have no compelling reason or motivation to return the following month
  
• Hypothesis #2
  Users, particularly from a non-tech-savvy segment, are hesitant and wary of providing their phone numbers for login due to security and scam concerns

To rapidly validate these hypotheses, we employed 2 ways. First, I partnered with Product Designer to conduct quick, intensive interviews with ~10 customers over 3 consecutive days via Zalo call. This allowed us to get direct, unfiltered feedback, especially on the cashback mechanism.

Simultaneously, we leveraged our sales team as a real-time feedback loop to gather broader, on-the-ground insights. This combined approach quickly confirmed our hypotheses and revealed three primary themes:

• Complex Cashback Rules: (Validating Hypothesis #1): The cashback logic was indeed too complicated for users to understand, diminishing their motivation to continue using the app.
  
• Fear of Scams: (Validating Hypothesis #2) A segment of users expressed strong concerns about scams and uninstalled the app immediately after redeeming their initial voucher.
  
• Technical Barriers: An additional insight we discovered was that poor network connectivity in certain regions led to failed OTP deliveries, creating significant login friction.

As the Product Manager, my role was to lead the team through this pivot with targeted, actionable solutions:

The Impact: A Successful Turnaround

These targeted interventions – simplifying the core value, empowering our sales channel, and addressing user friction – led to a significant turnaround.

The new user adoption rate stabilized and grew to an average of ~23% per month through late 2023 and early 2024, proving our retention-focused strategy was successful.

After 9 months of continously measuring, receiving the feedback & rapid changing, the app reaches to 3,218 MAUs (equivalent to the adoption rate of ~34% of the existing customers using the app)

Building on this momentum, the team’s next objective was to increase the retention rate to our target of 30%. We accelerated our development cycle, implementing a weekly release cadence to rapidly iterate based on continuous feedback from users and the sales team. This agile approach was designed to quickly achieve the product-market fit needed to ensure long-term user engagement.

Entering the Malaysian Market

After some launches in Vietnam, C-level requests to expand the app into Malaysia market, so it was crucial to first understand the local market. I initiated and led a user research project to uncover the unique needs, pain points, and behaviors of Malaysian store owners, ensuring our launch strategy was based on real user insights

The research focused on a central question: how do store owners currently purchase from and interact with their various suppliers, including both traditional local distributors and Ninja Mart?

• Our objective was to analyze this entire process to identify critical gaps and opportunities where the Ninja Mart App could provide unique value
  
• The research was designed as a qualitative study by in-person interviews with 12 store owners in Bahau, Malaysia
  
• The expected outcome was to produce a clear user segmentation, a detailed customer journey map, and a prioritized list of opportunities we should do to tailor the app experience for the Malaysian market.

From Pre-Research with the Sales Team

• A Unique User Profile: Our target users are predominantly older (60% aged 45+), less tech-savvy individuals running small, family-owned mom-and-pop shops in rural. While 80-90% own smartphones, usage is often limited to basic functions like WhatsApp (same as Việt Nam).

• The “Cigarette Distributor” Perception: Retailers primarily perceive Ninja Mart as a BAT cigarette distributor due to our business history. This has led to low awareness and a low success rate (20-30%) for our multi-category product offerings.

• Sales-Dependent Habits: Malaysian store owners are not proactive in managing their inventory. They heavily rely on and prefer salespeople to visit their stores, check stock levels for them, and they prefer to negotiate price in-person with the salespeople (same as Việt Nam).

From our deep-dive interviews with Outlets

We synthesized key findings from the research into the comparative customer journey map

This research led our focus into several key strategic questions, which became the foundation for our next phase of ideation:

1. How Might We display credit availability and options within the app for users?
2. How Might We simplify the ordering process?
3. How Might We improve our return & refund policy to build trust and reduce financial risk for merchants?

From Insights to Action: The Pilot Launch

We moved swiftly from ideation to execution. Instead of investing time to build complex & high-risky features, we test our key hypotheses with minimal effort first.

We developed and launched 2 low-effort features targeted directly at the pain points discovered during our research. These initiatives received full buy-in from the Sales and Commercial teams, enabling rapid development.

• Credit Visibility & Management: We introduced a feature allowing users to check their available credit balance provided by Ninja Mart, review outstanding payments, and receive reminders for upcoming due dates.

• Streamlined Ordering Flow: This new flow enabled users to quickly view the latest products, add items to a cart to see an estimated price with promotions applied, and then use a one-click button to call their salesperson and confirm the order.

The Results: Validating the Strategy

The results of this targeted, phased approach were overwhelmingly positive. To further amplify engagement during key periods, we also collaborated with marketing & commercial team to integrate seasonal gamification campaigns like ‘Spin The Wheel’ and ‘Open Red Packet’ into the app.

The Path Forward: From Pilot to E-commerce Platform

The pilot’s success paved the way for the app’s continued evolution into a full e-commerce platform, empowering customers to order anytime, anywhere, without relying on a salesperson’s visit.

To guide this ongoing development, I maintain a dynamic Opportunity Solution Tree for each strategic objective. This framework, informed by our initial research and continuous feedback from both customers and the sales team, allows us to constantly sharpen the roadmap and rigorously validate every idea before it enters sprint planning.