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Profile of typical eGrocery customer
The convenience aspect of eGrocery shopping is the major attraction for consumers. Today's jobs have increased work hours. Also, changing family structures have resulted in more single parent families with less time on their hands (reference, Lobel, Googins and Bankert, 1999; U.S. Department of Labor, 2000) and more dual income families again with time constraints and difficulties in balancing work with a functional home life.
Consumers are also busier than ever, more mobile, more affluent, and increasingly impatient with mundane time-consuming tasks. As a consequence of these social and attitudinal changes, people are drawn to convenient, dependable alternative solutions for mundane, repetitive but necessary tasks; hence, the growing appeal of e-Grocery shopping. In this regard, Morganosky and Cude (2000) found that 73 percent of e-Grocery shoppers reported that convenience and saving time as the primary reasons that they use the Internet to buy groceries
Superquinn are Buy4Now’s Irish eGrocery partner and in a similar survey of their online shopping base they found that 80% of respondents chose Superquinn4Food (their online shopping store) because of the convenience/time saved with a further 7% saying it was because they hated grocery shopping/grocery shops.
The appeal of eGrocery services is also influenced by many consumers findings grocery shopping a stressful activity. In a study of 239 respondents, Aylott and Mitchell (1998) found two major stressors associated with traditional grocery shopping, namely crowding and queuing (the latter was generally influenced by the former). With regard to these concerns the authors note that:
"Crowding is disliked because it frustrates customers achieving their task as easily as they would like ... It may also invoke feelings of claustrophobia in some people ... Queuing is a function of crowding and adds to the feeling of frustration and the distress this causes".
Other research supports the notion that time constraints and perceptions of grocery shopping as stressful contribute to the decision to e-Grocery shop. For example, the typical U.S. e-Grocery store shopper is a dual-income suburban family (Cude and Morganosky, 2000). According to Keh and Shieh (2001) such consumers are typically time-starved, have above average income and dislike grocery shopping. Of related interest, Morganosky and Cude (2000) reported that over 50 percent of e-Grocery shoppers earned over US$50,000 per year, and 80 percent of e-Grocery households comprised two or more adults. In a survey conducted by Buy4Now in 2002 the profiles of online grocery shoppers was found to show a huge leaning towards the 29 to 50 year age bracket (80% compared to world wide norm for all on-line shopping of 34% (source Taylor Nelson Sofres ) and also a marked skew towards female shoppers (74% of respondents).
Grocery Online shoppers can be broadly classified into three groups:
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Affluent/Time starved
The single or duel income no kids category who are technically advanced and both affluent and time starved are the most obvious first category. For this group convenience is the main driver with little or no concern about price of goods or delivery charges.
These are typically early adopters to all new technology and are already heavy Internet users and have purchased other goods and services online. A sub group of these early aadopters have been unkindly dubbed by marketers as "Mouse Potatoes" due to their avoidance of all stores and pre-disposition for ordering everything online. |
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Family with young children (New-Age Nurturers)
The largest group of online grocery shoppers comes from this area. Typically age profile of the adults is 29 – 50 with one or more children and a least one child under the age of five (5) years old. Single parents, duel income families and above average earning families all fall into this category. Time saving, less hassle and of course convenience drive this market, and they tend to be regular grocery shoppers with above average spends.
Again this socio economic group tends towards middle-income earners although this group will contain duel income working class families, and single parent working class customers. For this group grocery shopping online is a godsend and typically it is their first venture into the online world. They will tend to favor bricks and mortar retailers to pure-play as trust is the biggest concern factor with their first purchase. |
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Life Style
This is a small but important group of customers who have no real reason for not doing the shopping themselves (no young children, and one spouse stays at home) and certainly have the time but would rather pay for someone else to do it. Typically they are middle to upper middle income and are big online grocery spenders. They typically shop twice a week and are the most demanding of online customers. |
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