Commentary

A Quart Of Milk And A Dozen Eggs Online: Grocery Shoppers Shift To Digital

Grocery shoppers prefer food blogs over Web sites and Pinterest as a way of getting ideas for meals, according to “Digital planning and shopping in an omnichannel world,” a study by Chicory. 

And they apparently are not influenced by emails, although email has to be a widely used medium for getting them to blogs and other resources. 

Of the consumers polled, 38% chose food blogs as the top source for meal inspiration, while 35% chose publishers and 34% chose Pinterest.

When they want to save a recipe, 53% take a screenshot, while 35% bookmark it and 32% email it to themselves. In addition, 25% manually write the ingredients down so they can shop for them in the store.

Only 19% save recipes using social media or add ingredients to digital shopping carts, and this points to an opportunity for grocers. 

Among shoppers, 50.36% are likely to add items to their shopping carts throughout the week as they see inspiration, and 20.33% are very likely to do so. On a scale of one to five, the score here was 3. 

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And 57.81 will look at prior shopping lists and/or repeat an order, with 28.57% highly likely to do so. Here the rating was 5. 

Yuni Sameshima, CEO and Co-Founder of Chicory, reports that "overall, 85% of surveyed online grocery shoppers are likely to buy the same things weekly and 80% are likely to repeat previous grocery shopping orders."

This spells an opportunity for grocery brands to engage customers via email by showing them those lists and offering discounts or other perks for repeat purchases. 

If behavior and intent are primary data points, these lists indicate both. 

Another 55.02% buy the same things weekly, for a scale of 4, and 59.47% load everything at once, with 36.57% in the very likely bucket. This tops the scale at 5.

And when people add items to the digital shopping cart, here’s what they do next:

  • Check out for pickup in store (buy online, pickup in-store) — 49.59%
  • Check out for delivery — 43.93%
  • Come back to check out later — 42.26%
  • Go to store to physically shop for and purchase the items — 28.29%
  • Convert the digital shopping cart into a shopping list (e.g., print it out, take a screenshot, etc.) — 11.31%
  • Never check out — 3.16%

Again, email is a critical tool for confirming BOPIS orders, reminding shoppers that they need to check out and following up with emails that serve to cross-sell or upsell.  

Sameshima concludes that “creating a seamless omnichannel experience that spans both on-and offline is more important than ever before because today's shoppers demonstrate unprecedented and varied grocery shopping behaviors and purchase journeys."

Chicory surveyed 1,041 consumers who serve as the primary cooks in their households.

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