Grocery Customers Opt for in-Store Shopping When Seeking Deals

Consumers’ deal-seeking behaviors motivate them to shop brick-and-mortar even as grocers aim to boost eCommerce.

The Context

In an interview with PYMNTS, Barbara Connors, vice president of commercial insights at 84.51°, the marketing insights subsidiary of grocery giant Kroger, noted that consumers who are worried about grocery prices tend to choose brick-and-mortar.

“We know that very price sensitive customers are those that have lower engagement with eCommerce and are lower on the adoption curve, and those are the customers that are most likely to go into a store,” Connors said. “And one of the reasons is because they are looking for sales, deals and coupons, and it is easier for them to do that in-store than online.”

Consequently, given the ongoing demand for brick-and-mortar, grocers are offering in-store technology features to collect data on how these customers shop.

“This is what the next generation of the in-store journey should look like,” Raz Golan, CEO and co-founder of grocery store technology company Shopic, told PYMNTS in an interview. “All these data points are ones that we just couldn’t measure very well until today, and it opens a whole new world of data analytics.”

By the Numbers

Research from the latest edition of PYMNTS’ Consumer Inflation Sentiment study, “Consumer Inflation Sentiment: The False Appeal of Deal-Chasing Consumers,” which drew from a February survey of more than 2,100 U.S. consumers, found that 82% of grocery shoppers who are motivated by which merchants have the best deals made their most recent purchase online. In contrast, a significantly lower 73% of shoppers who are loyal to their preferred merchants said the same.

Overall, however, eCommerce adoption is on the rise. Data from PYMNTS’ study “Changes in Grocery Shopping Habits and Perception,” which drew from a December survey of more than 2,400 U.S. consumers, found that 7% of consumers shop for groceries exclusively via eCommerce channels, a 36-fold increase since before the pandemic.