Product/Experiment Case: Smart Cart in a Partner Grocery Store
Instacart is partnering with a local grocery store to introduce a smart cart.
Product concept
-
While physically shopping in the partner store, a user can use the smart cart UI to:
-
search/browse the
current store’s products and prices
, and
-
simultaneously see
products and prices from other stores on the Instacart app
.
Your tasks
-
Is this a good idea?
State your reasoning and key risks/tradeoffs.
-
Propose clear
hypotheses
(at least 2–3) about how this feature will impact Instacart’s marketplace.
-
Define a measurement plan:
-
Primary success metric(s)
-
Diagnostic metrics
(to explain
why
it moved)
-
Guardrail metrics
(to ensure no harm)
-
Design an
experiment (A/B test or alternative)
:
-
Unit of randomization (user, trip, store, cart) and why
-
Treatment/control definition
-
Key threats to validity (spillovers, interference, selection bias) and mitigations
-
How you would analyze results and make a ship/no-ship decision
Assume you can instrument cart events and link them to Instacart account activity, but the feature is only available in some partner stores initially.