As a PM how do you analyse this move by swiggy?

Seems like they A/B tested in some areas.

Possible Hypothesis-

1. Customers that receive the free goods are more likely to stick around and order with Swiggy Instamart, than go to competitors (Zepto/Blinkit)
2. The free goods can act as a trigger for the customer to purchase more products of the same theme on the same day (impulse)
3. A few customers receiving the free goods will post on social media and Instamart will have the attention of a lot more customers and gain traction (like this person on LinkedIn)

Challenges-

1. Getting approval from Finance Team for this. Impact on PnL
2. Accurately ascertaining that retention went up in the test areas only because of this activity (hopefully there were no other triggers)

Findings- Can someone from the Instamart team share the findings here?

I was going to tweet that this extra shit is now in the dustbin and they should have allowed me to remove the items from cart

Being a transaction platform, any experiment that improves the user's perception of value is a plus.

Everyone has decent inventory, quick delivery time and ease of searching the item you want to buy - which is very transactional. So what is the additional aha moments you can give, even if it's infrequent but helps imprint a stronger good brand and become the one they recollect when they have a purchase need.

This one is thoughtful and has more context and meaning for the user to think a lot about than just getting a sample cosmetic or free item. Also notice in their fresh fruits section - they add contextual copy like - sourced daily at 5 am, ripes in 2 days..etc. Again these are thoughtful and much appreciated by the customer and a more recurring aha feature. The ugadi one is one time marketing, for better brand recall.

Since we are talking about instamart. i remember during early days of instamart, i had ordered sanitary pads and they had sent chocolate along with it. From then every month i order on instamart 😂 i need to order or buy it from somewhere then why not instamart, maybe i will get a chocolate again 😂

wasting paper for no reason 🤦

Imstamart ki fati padi hai bhar bhar ke Discounts de rha h

adding nothing intelligent here but i hate it when they send free perishables and there's no way for me to opt out. i don't like cooking, i don't want to waste.

We have to think what can the goal/objective behind this move? What metric are they trying to move ?
As Swiggy customer, this might create goodwill for me. Will it affect the order choice for the next time from Zomato vs Swiggy? I’m not sure. Yes it does create a positive goodwill for the company, but that’s it.