The strategy: Dollar General is stepping up its push into ecommerce to increase basket sizes and deepen engagement.

• To raise awareness of its myDG Delivery same-day service, the retailer is offering customers one free delivery order through February 28 when they use a myDG account. The service is available through Dollar General’s app and website at more than 17,000 stores nationwide.
• The discounter relies on third-party intermediaries to power its delivery offerings. It works with DoorDash, which covers about 18,000 stores, and Uber Eats, which currently serves about 17,000 stores.
• The approach enables Dollar General to get orders to shoppers’ doors quickly despite having lightly staffed stores; more than 75% of Dollar General’s delivery orders arrive within an hour, the retailer said in December. With its heavy presence in small towns and communities, Dollar General is bringing faster fulfillment to markets where it has historically been limited.
• The service has helped Dollar General attract new customers and increase basket sizes, with the average online order value exceeding the typical in-store transaction. The increased digital engagement has also provided a boost to the retailer’s in-house retail media platform, DG Media Network, which reaches more than 7 million monthly active users and roughly 90 million addressable customer profiles.

Implications for rural retailers: Dollar General’s delivery push comes as Amazon is making a major rural expansion push that includes investing more than $4 billion to triple the size of its rural delivery network and bring same- and next-day delivery to 4,000 smaller cities and rural communities.

• Amazon sees faster rural delivery as a way to convert more households to Prime, where penetration lags urban markets. Once customers join, usage tends to compound: The more perks members use, the more they spend, while nonmembers’ spending often flattens or declines.
• With Amazon pressing harder into rural markets, delivery is quickly shifting from a nice-to-have to a competitive necessity, forcing rural-focused retailers to raise their game or risk ceding share.

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