Who are online grocery shoppers?

Abstract

The acceleration of the digitalisation of grocery shopping is an important trend that shows that this way of sourcing groceries is increasingly accepted by customers. Uncovering, understanding, and describing the differences between online grocery shoppers is interesting from a scientific point of view and a practical one. Correctly targeting a specific customer segment increases the very effectiveness of marketing communication by spending the cost of communicating with those correctly targeted customers that are valuable to the company. Therefore, this paper explores the behaviour of customers when shopping online and tries to find similarities in this behaviour. The aim of the paper is to generate customer segments of online grocery shoppers that provide a more comprehensive insight by reflecting on their shopping behaviour, personality traits and characteristics, loyalty, overall satisfaction with online grocery shopping in the current retailer, and frequency of social media usage. An online questionnaire survey was conducted with a panel of respondents from the IPSOS research agency to obtain primary data. Data were analysed using factor and cluster analysis. These analyses resulted in the creation of a segmentation that identified five main segments of online grocery shoppers. The constructed combined segmentation divides shoppers into five segments: Quality-oriented shoppers (18.9%), influential utilitarians (21.7%), loyal traditionalists (16.4%), satisfied conditional loyalists (14.9%), and movable eco-sympathizers (28.1%). Then these category types are characterised in terms of their most salient characteristics. The results of this study show the variables that influence customers in their decision-making process. Outcomes increase knowledge about online grocery shopping behaviour, motives, and purchase requirements. These are also beneficial for grocery retailers for better targeting or fostering loyalty.