The future is for Artificial Intelligence to deliver products to customers’ homes without them having to ask for what they want. This interview with Marcos Santos, e-commerce director at INSCO, the Bensaude Group’s Distribution Unit, shows how this could happen. It is an innovative platform that may even be unique in the Azores.
When did the online platform, now known as http://www.N9V.pt, start?
Marco Santos (E-commerce Director at INSCO – Bensaude Group): – It started on March 9, 2022, and celebrates its third year on the 9th.
What were the early days like?
They happened in the post-COVID period. Before this one, we had another platform, and the early days were very successful.
Those customers who came with us during the COVID period switched to the new platform, and the number of subscribers has grown exponentially over the last three years.
When you say it’s increasing exponentially, what are you saying?
In practice, customers have joined and continue to participate in droves.
In three years of the project, we’ve already doubled the number of clients. We have over 10,000 registered customers, more than a thousand of whom make recurring monthly purchases with us on the platform.
What do they buy?
This platform has a very clear food base from the shopkeeper (O Continente). This shopkeeper project originated to make it possible, even during COVID-19, to get items from the Continente shopkeeper to customers’ homes. We brought what people couldn’t buy because of lockdowns – because they couldn’t leave the house – to their homes via the platform.
This type of consumption has continued throughout Covid with the growing need for customers to feel comfortable at home receiving their order or to have the comfort of buying online and receiving it at home. This is almost a market trend, so it’s normal for an increase in customers over the next three years.
At one point, you talked about 500 items, and now, how many?
As of today, we already have 20,000 items available on the platform from Continente, Wells, Worten, Note, MO, Antiga Modalfa, and MIA, which is a costume jewelry store. So, we provide online articles on everything from food to clothing, footwear, fashion, health products, and electronics. All of this is present today in what we call the marketplace, which is a site that combines several stores of different types on the same site. That’s what we have today. It’s a website in marketplace format.
Is the size of the business exceeding your expectations?
Yes. When we started this project, we already had some expectations because we knew we would be pioneers in this online market. Azoreans are very familiar with buying online (…) The cost of being an island forces people to consume many products on the online market.
All our studies indicated that Azoreans consume many products online, which was confirmed. And we’ve managed to bring in many of those products that you couldn’t buy physically on any of the other islands. The products we sell on São Miguel, we have now managed to consolidate on the platform and offer from Santa Maria to Corvo.


Do you end up offering products from Ponta Delgada in Flores that would never exist in Flores under normal conditions?
Exactly, and people thank us for it.
We have more customers on islands like Flores, where we don’t have a physical presence, than on islands where we already exist because the customers are shared between the two media: online and offline.
And how long does it take for a product to arrive in Flores?
We have different delivery services. In the case of Flores, an air service can take 48 hours. But we’re well aware of the logistical reality that there can be flight delays or delays in sea deliveries. Sometimes, it can take up to five or six days. But our score, in terms of logistics, is to deliver in the Azores in as little time as possible and rationalize in terms of economic cost. This is because these projects depend a lot on having good logistics in place.
If you don’t have good logistics, it’s difficult to make a project viable for day-to-day execution.
Can you get the product to the customer’s home at the price in the large Supermarkets?
That’s the great advantage of this site. We practice the price that the shopkeeper tells us. That price on the website is exactly the same as the price at which the product is being sold in the store. We have free shipping campaigns for purchases over 100 euros. We deliver these items free of charge and at the same price as they are bought in the physical store. It’s amazing!
And what type of customer comes to you most?
We have customers aged 30 and up to 55, mainly those whose lives no longer allow them to spend a lot of time shopping and who also become familiar with online shopping very quickly. These customers understand that online shopping is an additional service provided and that they don’t need to waste time in the physical store. They believe it, and we have a very high retention rate on the site, meaning that every customer who tries the site tends to repeat the purchase.
Do you have people over the age of 60 buying online?
It happens, and some people buy from us over the phone. We have a call center service, and they call us. We also have this information on the website. They call us and tell us what they want. We make the trolley for the people who have the most difficulty. The team there is fantastic; they have great patience. Even for people who don’t have as much online knowledge, they do the trolley over the phone. And this is also a service we provide.
How many customers do you have at the moment?
We have already made twice as many sales as we did at the beginning, and most of these customers are from outside the islands where we initially provided the service.
Do you go to Corvo?
We go to Corvo a few times, yes. We have very satisfied customers who thank us for bringing them products that they would never be able to buy if they didn’t have such a site. Corvo is one of the islands where we probably have the highest number of people, in terms of density, buying online. This is because there really is a shortage of products, and they also see this platform as a way of receiving these products at home. And we go there.
When there are supply problems, for example, on the island of Flores, does demand for the online service increase?
We’ve also been trying to make up for a lack of logistics in the Azores. Your question is legitimate, but some means are shared with any other delivery service. We don’t have a miracle solution. Now, what we do try to do is, if there is, as there was recently on the island of Flores, some limitation in docking a boat, we try to send essential goods by plane, at least at no extra cost to the customer, to meet their needs.


What is the level of repeat customers?
We have almost a 70% repeat rate, which means that 7 out of every 10 customers who try it buy it again. That gives us a huge margin for progress over time with our technical improvements to the site. We are now preparing a new version of the site at the time of the launch, which is already better prepared to respond to the increasing use of cell phones to make these purchases.
What will the future bring in this type of business?
Artificial intelligence will help us better prepare for customer needs. Nowadays, we start from the principle that I must tell the machine what I want. Artificial Intelligence will allow us to do the opposite: the machine will tell us what we need. So this will be a huge chip in this project, which is when we connect the Artificial Intelligence information here. It will prepare trolleys for us more easily and tell us more easily what’s missing in the house.
Artificial Intelligence is a path that we already have to start taking.
You’re saying that the online shopping cart will start telling the customer what’s missing at home?
Yes. In practice, we can get this from our customer consumption data. Imagine a scenario where a customer buys a dozen eggs every week. It’s easy for the machine to calculate that next week, there will be a shortage of eggs if he buys them every week. It’s Artificial Intelligence saying, “You’re going to run out of eggs.” And it directly adds eggs to the cart.
The day will come when the customer just says the order can come…
Yes, and possibly, they won’t even have to say anything. As soon as we trust the system, the machine will take care of everything needed to deliver the products on the day it knows it’ll be missing them at home. The customer doesn’t even have to say anything. The machine delivers the order to their home. That’s where we’re heading. It’s inevitable. There are already some very interesting future visions for some of these sites.
The online system takes customers away from the checkouts in the hypermarkets…
We don’t want to replace anyone or the physical store. Some people don’t want to and value their time too much to waste; imagine half an hour or an hour shopping for items that are part of their daily lives. Why do I need to spend an hour shopping if I can get the machine to help me do it and I don’t have to do anything? It tells me what I need and even delivers the products to my home when I haven’t said anything. So, this very use of time will also be a differentiating factor in these projects. The machine will already tell me what basic trolley I need, based on my history of that customer. And, over time, it’s fine-tuned so much with the information that it’s unlikely to make a mistake. In other words, the shopping cart I’m going to be given is already the cart I really need, and all I have to do is say yes to the machine, and it will load it up and get me home. That’s the future…
Information already knows what customers eat, what they buy, and what kind of customers they are, whether they’re promotional or regular brand customers. It already knows that, in the case of yogurt, they only buy Yoçor. So artificial intelligence will already say: Yoçor yogurt for that customer, and it already knows what flavor it is. Artificial Intelligence will help in many areas of our lives.
And who is Marco Santos?
Marcos Santos is the e-commerce director at INSCO, the Bensaude Group’s Distribution Unit. Six people work directly in this department. I’m responsible for this team and for this website, which is up and running 24 hours a day.
When I joined the Bensaude Group, I studied business management at Worten. The fact is that it was necessary, with Covid, to start this online project. A department was created to deal with all the issues a site requires. That’s why the opportunity arose, and I’m currently the company’s director in this e-commerce area.
We have the group’s communications, management systems, and logistics departments, which support us. The information systems technically guarantee that everything behind the system works properly. We have IT security colleagues who help ensure this project is secure and allow the client to trust us. We have a partner, HIVE, who developed the new platform. It’s important to know that we have a company with the skills to do this work in e-commerce and other online projects.
Regarding logistics, in addition to having in-house staff, we also have partners who help us deliver the products to people’s homes, such as SATA, CTT, Bertrans, which is in-house, and Retailor.
There’s also sustainability: I can receive a cardboard box instead of a plastic bag. Many customers complained at first about the plastic bags, so we made the cardboard box available to transport the items.

In Correio dos Açores-Natalino Viveiros, director

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.